Deseret Magazine September 2025

THE BIG SQUEEZE

HIGHER ED IS UNDER PRESSURE FROM ALL SIDES. CAN IT BE SAVED?

BY PATRICK J. DENEEN

The story of American religion is still being wri en.

Religion in America is constantly changing – and Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study tracks those changes across nearly 20 years of data.

From the rise of the nones to shifting beliefs and practices, it’s the clearest view yet of the role of religion in our country.

See what’s changing at pewresearch.org/rls

DEGREES OF CHANGE

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PROMISE OF COLLEGE?

by clark g . gilbert , ted mitchell , derrick anderson , beth akers and david a . hoag

40 THE BATTLE OVER HIGHER EDUCATION

IS TRUMP’S PUSH TO PUNISH THE IVY LEAGUE GOING TOO FAR? by eric

schulzke

SAWDUST AND STARCHED SHIRTS

CELEBRATING THE NOSTALGIC SPIRIT OF COUNTY FAIRS. by

lauren steele

BELIEVE IN BURNLEY

bauer

NOVEMBER 17, 2025

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“AI is not going to style your hair or fix the pipes under your sink.”

Nunes is president of California Lutheran University and a senior fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy. An ordained Lutheran minister, he is past president and CEO of Lutheran World Relief and held an endowed professorship at Valparaiso University. His commentary on how higher education can help heal what divides us is on page 11.

Elder Gilbert is a General Authority Seventy and commissioner of the Church Educational System for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has been president of BYU-Pathway Worldwide and BYU-Idaho, president and CEO of Deseret News and is a former entrepreneurial management professor at Harvard. His essay on what faith-based schools provide young adults seeking meaning is on page 31.

Gorewitz is a writer and lifelong New Yorker whose personal essays have been published in HuffPost, Business Insider, USA Today, New York Daily News and Living Better After Fifty. Her first book, “You, Me and the Dog: An Unconditional Love Story,” will be published by Heliotrope Books in August 2026. Her story about the unknowns of aging is on page 16.

A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Akers is also a contributor to the Sutherland Institute’s “Defending Ideas” podcast. She has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Opinion and is the author of “Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher Education.” Her essay on that topic is on page 35.

Deneen is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who has also taught at Georgetown and Princeton universities. He is the author of several books, including “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future,” “Why Liberalism Failed,” “Democratic Faith” and a number of edited volumes. His essay on the myth of academic freedom is on page 68.

A staff photographer at the Deseret News, Crowley’s work has also been published in the Chicago Tribune and The Virginian-Pilot. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2024 and was recognized this year as the Emerging Vision Photojournalist of the Year by the National Press Photographer’s Association. Her photo essay is on page 60.

BETH AKERS

JOHN NUNES

ANN GOREWITZ

PATRICK J. DENEEN

TESS CROWLEY

CLARK G. GILBERT

AN EDUCATED CHOICE

Earlier this year, my friend expressed concern about his brother who, by all measures, would make a strong candidate for higher education. He had good grades in high school and high ambitions. I asked if I could talk with this young man, and my friend arranged for a meeting. I did my level best to outline the statistics for why a college degree continues to be — despite all the challenges currently facing higher education — a wise financial investment and a prudent life choice for long-term personal development.

When our meeting concluded, I sensed this young man wasn’t quite persuaded. It turns out he’s not alone. Fewer young men are choosing college.

Earlier this year, The New York Times ran an article with the headline, “It’s Not Just a Feeling: Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind.” The reporting featured a chart with federal data noting the sizable gap between male high school graduates enrolled in college (57 percent) and female high school graduates enrolled in college (66 percent). Pew Research Center further estimated that today there are about one million fewer males enrolling in college than 15 years ago.

Certainly, there’s no single cause for this phenomenon. But there is anecdotal evidence that a combination of rising costs and the cultural climate on many campuses are causing at least some to jump into the workforce sooner rather than pursue a degree. A crisis in meaning, mental health and loneliness are other contributing factors impacting all students.

This year’s special issue of higher education explores some of these factors.

Elder Clark G. Gilbert, the commissioner for the Church Educational System for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

discusses the ways faith-based institutions of higher learning are uniquely situated to address these concerns.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education and the former undersecretary of Education, together with Derrick Anderson make the case that while higher education has always been under pressure, now is the time to embrace innovation and reform while emphasizing the good our campuses contribute. Beth Akers of the American Enterprise Institute tackles the challenge of rising costs. “What comes next,” Akers concludes, “must be smarter, clearer and more transparent.”

Patrick Deneen, a distinguished scholar at Notre Dame, walks through the history of academic freedom and its meaning today for religious institutions. Eric Schulzke provides in-depth reporting about the federal government’s ongoing battle against the Ivy League.

Sprinkled throughout the issue are must-read articles such as Ethan Bauer’s account of a scrappy band of footballers in England with a front office defying the odds by leaning on faith as well. An ideas essay from Zachary Davis explores why the rising generation is rediscovering faith.

In the coming years, higher education will face a so-called demographic cliff due to the declining number of college-aged students nationwide. This means higher education will need to become more relevant and essential to those potentially interested in college training. Some of this will involve making the dollars and cents more attractive, but the bigger gains will come as higher education addresses the larger looming challenges facing young men and young women, including the crises of meaning and loneliness. Faith-based institutions add something special to this conversation, which secular campuses — especially those under increased scrutiny today — would do well to study.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR HAL BOYD

EDITOR

JESSE HYDE

CREATIVE DIRECTOR ERIC GILLETT

MANAGING EDITOR MATTHEW BROWN

DEPUTY EDITOR CHAD NIELSEN

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

JAMES R. GARDNER, LAUREN STEELE

EDITOR-AT-LARGE DOUG WILKS

STAFF WRITERS

ETHAN BAUER, VALERIE BRAYLOVSKIY, NATALIA GALICZA

WRITER-AT-LARGE

MICHAEL J. MOONEY

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

LOIS M. COLLINS, JENNIFER GRAHAM, KEVIN LIND, MARIYA MANZHOS, ERIC SCHULZKE

ART DIRECTORS IAN SULLIVAN, BRENNA VATERLAUS

COPY EDITORS

SARAH HARRIS, VALERIE JONES, CHRIS MILLER, CAMILLE SMITH

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PROPOSED AS A STATE IN 1849, DESERET SPANNED FROM THE SIERRAS IN CALIFORNIA TO THE ROCKIES IN COLORADO, AND FROM THE BORDER OF MEXICO NORTH TO OREGON, IDAHO AND WYOMING. INFORMED BY OUR HERITAGE AND VALUES, DESERET MAGAZINE COVERS THE PEOPLE AND CULTURE OF THAT TERRITORY AND ITS INTERSECTION WITH THE BROADER WORLD.

Our JUNE cover story by Cambridge University emeritus history professor Gary Gerstle (“The End of Free Market Consensus”) explained why free markets and global capitalism reigned supreme for four decades. But what will replace the old order is up for grabs. An adaptation from the author’s book “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order,” which Gerstle drew upon in May at Cambridge for a conference titled Beyond Neoliberalism, drew both praise and criticism from readers who found it informative on the evolution of free trade but lacking in revealing neoliberalism’s faults and what led to its decline. “The author promotes the fiction of a global free market,” wrote an online reader named Vermonter. “Having lived abroad for nearly a decade, I can tell you that the global free market is a myth. And, America’s so-called allies and friends have used the myth to enrich themselves at America’s expense.” Contributing writer Eric Schulzke told the story behind the demise of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in academia and the workplace across the country (“The Rise and (Sudden) Fall of DEI ”). Schulzke’s exploration into the reasons for the enthusiastic embrace then collapse of DEI won plaudits from leaders and influencers in higher education. John Tomasi, president of the Heterodox Academy, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for open inquiry on university campuses, called it the best piece he has read on the issue. “It just had so much nuance and depth,” Tomasi said. “I’ve shown it to several of my friends, (and told them) ‘You gotta read this one.’” Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president emeritus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and who was quoted in Schulzke’s story, wrote that he has had “interesting conversations on a number of points” with those with whom he shared the article. “Thank you for caring about this issue, and most important, giving us a great deal to think about as we continue to grapple with these challenges.” Writer Mark Dee reported on the work of Fowler-O’Sullivan Foundation, which picks up where government searchers have given up on hikers who never return home from an ill-fated adventure (“When Hikers Go Missing”). “I’ve heard from so many people who read the article and were moved by it. You brought depth and humanity to a topic that’s close to my heart,” wrote foundation executive director Cathy Tarr. “I’m so grateful for the visibility it’s brought to this cause.”

CORRECTION: A story in the July/August issue under the headline “Betting on Disaster” stated that Jody McDonald and his wife began renovations to their cabin four years ago and that the insurance premiums they paid were monthly. The McDonalds began renovations on their cabin six years ago and the insurance premiums were yearly.

“I’ve heard from so many people who read the article and were moved by it.”

THE EMBRACE OF FAITH AND REASON

CAN FAITH-BASED COLLEGES HEAL WHAT DIVIDES US?

BY

JOHN NUNES

The Center for the Humanities at a leading university offers this simple and compelling definition of its discipline: “The humanities are the stories, the ideas, and the words that help us understand our lives and our world. They introduce us to people we have never met, places we have never visited, and ideas that may never have crossed our minds.”

And why should we care about these people, their stories and their ideas? Because when faith and reason dance, their coming together sparks the curiosity of love.

After more than 40 years of teaching theology at Valparaiso University, a Lutheran institution, a retiring colleague reflected on his decades of tenure: What had changed? What had remained the same? His response: “When I started, my students had names like Kristen, John, Mark and Mary, and I used to teach them about what Martin Luther believed about Jesus; then if there was any time remaining at the end of the semester, we’d talk about Muhammad and Krishna. At the end of my career, however, my students were named Jesus (pronounced as a Spanish name), Muhammad, Krishna and Shaquita. Although they now don’t too much care about Martin Luther, they do still seem to love learning about the world-changing justice and mercy of Jesus.”

The transition he noted was from a student population with ethnic descendants once primarily northern European to those who are now global; from monocultural particularity to inter-everything: intercultural, interracial, interfaith. Two rising variables — transportation and technology — have intensified a dilemma noted by social psychologists: We are more interconnected than ever and,

paradoxically, less connected historically, ethnically, linguistically, politically or tribally.

Some see this pluralism as divisive, diversity as disintegrative, and inclusivity as corrosive to the Christian faith. This emeritus professor, on the other hand, credits his faith as a pivotal influence in shaping his mind to embrace a new demographic reality.

Our ideas about God hold both intended and unintended consequences for our pedagogies and our treatment of the students and colleagues who come to us as persons. We know them not as census data, nor boxable categories, nor stereotyped forms, but as humans, possessors of divine dignity, intrinsic value, infinite purpose. This understanding animates us anew to study the humanities as the human ties that humanize us. Theoretical concepts conceal and carry ethical implications precisely because of the eternal Word becoming fully human (John 1:14), grace taking on a human face, faith and reason embracing each other.

Faith seeks the ancient Aristotelian ideal of virtue (aretē or excellence). The Greek verb for fixing one’s focus is λογίζεσθε (logizesthe). We hear in it an actual English verb — to logicalize — meaning to prioritize this use of reason in pursuit of truth.

It’s the meaning of Northwestern University’s Latin motto: “Quaecumque Sunt Vera” from Philippians 4:8. Eugene Peterson’s creative translation of this verse puts it this way: “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious — the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”

Flowing from this humanizing purpose, the humanities spark love’s curiosity. At mealtimes when I was growing up, my family ordinarily came together to eat. My late father, Neville Nunes, a man of deep faith — considered by me and by many to be an emancipatory educator — would, in turn, direct me and my siblings at the dinner table to share, “What good questions did you ask in school today?” The humanities teach us to respectfully question narratives, interrogate truths, challenge assumptions and honor alternate narratives. This is a core charism of faith-based universities.

A charism is the Spirit’s enlivening gift, landing on individuals within institutions. Leaning into our unique identities, Christian colleges and universities can become prophetically differentiated within the culture, daring to care in ways that elevate their institution’s trajectory and in ways, we pray, that ameliorate the seemingly rising incivility of humanity.

In Plato’s “Republic,” we are given insight into the root of the word “theology”: It centers on logos, the word of the poet breaking into the cultural caterwaul with shalom, salaam, interrupting violent silences with subterranean love, angling iambically into tyrannies of rigidity with rhythmic pity, promising the mercy of the deity.

For the sake of our students, may it be so.

JOHN NUNES IS THE PRESIDENT OF CALIFORNIA LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY AND A SENIOR FELLOW AT THE CENTER FOR RELIGION, CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY.

HYPER DIAGNOSIS

ADHD: THE ENIGMATIC EPIDEMIC

ONCE, “HYPERACTIVE” KIDS were dismissed as problem children. The advent of attention-deficit hyperactivity/disorder, or ADHD, offered an alternative explanation for behavioral issues and symptoms like difficulty focusing and sitting still, racing thoughts and overlapping internal dialogue. It also offered a solution in the form of a pill. Decades later, ADHD is a burgeoning neurological diagnosis among children and adults alike, often celebrated as a more dynamic way of interfacing with the world. But in fact, we’re less sure now about what it is, how it works, what causes it and how to diagnose it. Here’s the breakdown.

—NATALIA GALICZA

1775

In his book, “The Philosophical Doctor,” German physician Melchior Adam Weikard cited inattentiveness and distractibility as symptoms of mental disorder, blaming “fibers” weakened by the patient’s upbringing. He suggested treatments like cold mineral baths, gymnastic exercise and

being left alone in a dark room. In 1798, Scottish physician Sir Alexander Crichton described a similar condition arising from an “unnatural sensibility of the nerves,” which patients called “the fidgets.” Curiously, each later became a personal physician to a Russian czar.

6 SYMPTOMS X

6 MONTHS

Children under 16 can be diagnosed with ADHD if they exhibit six related symptoms — like squirming, interrupting, getting distracted or forgetting homework — for six months or more. Five symptoms is enough for adults, per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association’s encyclopedic reference used by providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and the courts. The DSM first covered “hyperkinetic reaction of childhood” in 1968; “Attention-Deficit Disorder” in 1980; ADHD in 1987; and adult ADHD in 1994.

DOUBLE THE DRUGS

Prescriptions for stimulants used to treat ADHD, like Adderall and Ritalin, rose 58 percent nationwide from 2012 to 2022. Fueled by amphetamine and methylphenidate, respectively, these meds have been shown to improve classroom behavior — for a time — but don’t boost academic performance. These drugs are also highly addictive, admittedly abused by up to a quarter of middle and high school students, according to an expansive study released in 2023.

By age 17, 23 percent of boys have been diagnosed with ADHD, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with 15 percent of all adolescents. Seven million children have been diagnosed – more than 1 in 10. There are also 15.5 million adult cases of ADHD; 40 percent of men were identified as adults, compared to a whopping 61 percent of women, whose symptoms are less likely to be visible.

“NORMALLY, WHEN A DIAGNOSIS BOOMS LIKE THIS IT’S BECAUSE OF SOME NOVEL SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH — A NEWLY DISCOVERED TREATMENT OR A FRESH UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT CAUSES THE UNDERLYING SYMPTOMS … (BUT) IN MANY WAYS, WE NOW UNDERSTAND ADHD LESS WELL THAN WE THOUGHT WE DID A COUPLE OF DECADES AGO.”

PAUL

TOUGH, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

ZERO BIOMARKERS

1 in 10

KIDS HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD

52% MISINFORMATION

That’s what Canadian researchers found in a 2022 study of posts about ADHD on TikTok. Another 27 percent were anecdotal, based on personal experience. Just one-fifth of posts offered useful information. These numbers echoed similar studies on other health care topics across social media platforms, like Reddit or YouTube.

Scientists have found no concrete measure of ADHD — no brain anomaly on an MRI, no gene sequences — though it’s often described as “genetic” and is nine times likelier to recur among siblings. Symptoms overlap with anxiety, PTSD or autism — ergo the modern grouping “neurodivergence.” But environment is a factor, and just 1 in 9 kids diagnosed with ADHD experience symptoms throughout childhood.

PRESCRIPTIONS FOR ADHD MEDS ROSE 1/5

One in 4 American adults suspect they have ADHD but have not been diagnosed.

15.5 million

ADULTS

Per The New York Times, this seems to indicate environmental causes, rather than a brain deficiency.

58%

$122.8 BILLION

Between lost productivity, unemployment, doctor’s visits and medications, the disorder is estimated to cost Americans $14,092 per adult each year, as of 2021. That’s more than the average cost of in-state tuition for a four-year university. The market for ADHD medications was assessed at $15.2 billion in 2024 and is expected to balloon to as much as $24.1 billion by 2033.

IDENTITY CRISIS

WHAT IS COLLEGE REALLY FOR?

THIS IS A crucial time for the American university system. Colleges and universities, both public and private, are grappling with their place in a changing world. Costs are skyrocketing, as is student loan debt. Technology threatens to undermine the educational experience through AI cheating while devaluing many degrees in the workplace. Some campuses have become literal political battlegrounds, and many question the federal government’s role through the Department of Education. Amid the tumult, these institutions must prepare for a future that looks uncertain, with a clear idea of who they are and why they exist. Is college a financial investment meant to improve career prospects? Or do universities answer a higher calling? —ETHAN

BAUER

DO THE MATH CHARACTER COUNTS

THE COLLEGE AND university system is an investment in human potential for both students and society at large. And like any investment, it should not only pay for itself but yield a financial return to any of these investors. Institutions of higher education are duty-bound to adapt in order to protect that investment as costs continue to spiral and the economy changes too quickly for most of us to keep up. Society needs these schools to prepare young people who can compete in the modern age, with specialized knowledge in fields that are valued in the marketplace.

Students would surely agree, since the main reason most of them endure to graduation is to improve their future incomes. According to a 2023 survey by Anthology, a private company that builds digital platforms for educational institutions, 59 percent of college students stayed in school to pursue higher earning potential; 45 percent enrolled in the first place to access better job benefits like health insurance and maternity leave. Students expect to emerge from their universities prepared to compete and thrive in an increasingly difficult labor market. Unfortunately, they are more likely to graduate with a burden of debt that will follow them throughout their adult lives. The average federal student loan balance today is close to $40,000. In aggregate, their burden is approaching $2 trillion, a massive and concerning debt bubble that could impact the entire economy. Meanwhile, recent years have seen a variety of educational fields fall from favor in the marketplace, from expected declines in arts and the humanities to shockers like engineering and computer science. Students shouldn’t be weighed down with debt for degrees that are losing value. There may be no obvious solutions. Perhaps the country should invest more in vocational programs. “Welders make more money than philosophers,” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in 2015. “We need more welders and less philosophers.” Or maybe universities should trim general education requirements to let students focus on developing expertise in their chosen fields. Highly specialized degrees could be more narrowly targeted and, therefore, cheaper. Either way, we must accept that higher education today exists as professional training first; anything else is a luxury that few can afford.

HIGHER EDUCATION HAS always been about our future as a society, an effort to develop not just better workers but more complete human beings. A range of sources contribute to funding the cost of each student’s education, from state and federal governments to churches and philanthropic foundations. They do so as more than a financial transaction. They’re investing in the unique ability of colleges and universities to shape informed, mature and well-rounded citizens who can contribute to the American experience.

A three-dimensional education — common at religious schools — has transcendent value. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes that the end goal of education is “the development of a refined, enlightened, and godly character.” Jesuit institutions embrace the principle of cura personalis, or “care for the whole person” in Latin. Students appreciate this, as one Gonzaga senior told a school publication: “This is so important during college, when so many of us are figuring out who we are and how we want to show up in the world.”

Students should become engaged citizens with critical thinking skills and the spiritual maturity to navigate a complex world. At the University of Chicago, the “Core,” a 15-course curriculum that emphasizes science, writing and the humanities, has made undergraduate degrees more valuable. “The Core teaches undergraduates how to think critically and how to approach problems from multiple perspectives,” the university writes. “The goal is to cultivate in students a range of insights, habits of mind, and scholarly experiences … (that) fosters an enduring dedication to reflection and learning.”

Institutions must find cost-effective ways to educate students without sacrificing the values that make learning worthwhile. Many offer workout spaces and recreational sports, recognizing their intrinsic value. “In an era where sedentary lifestyles are increasingly prevalent,” writes one researcher, “(physical education) offers a necessary counterbalance, promoting physical health, mental well-being, and social interaction.” Colleges and universities should expand this approach to all aspects of the person.

LOST AND FOUND

WHAT NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT GETTING OLDER

BY ANN GOREWITZ

It was a spectacular afternoon on Sunday, June 27, 1976. It had rained every Sunday for three weeks straight, but on this day, the sun shone.

“For better or worse. Till death do you part,” said our rabbi, as Steve and I shared the moment — excited and nervous — under a canopy on my uncle’s sprawling lawn, surrounded by our family and friends.

Almost 50 years later, Steve lay in the palliative care unit in a New York hospital while I lay in our bed, less than three miles away. On that still April night, my cellphone jarred me out of much-needed sleep. “Your husband passed away a few minutes ago,” the nurse told me. “It was peaceful. I saw the photo by his bedside. What a beautiful family.”

I had left the snapshot by Steve’s bedside months ago, to remind the staff that he was a person who was healthy once, and very much loved.

But I wasn’t at his side when he died. Staff had chased me out that evening, upholding Covid-era restrictions and curfews. The last thing I said to him as I held his hand, black and blue from the

IV needles, was, “You’re my world. I love you. You’ve made my life so happy. See you tomorrow, sweetheart.”

He crept out of a coma-like sleep and smiled.

After I hung up the phone, I dressed, washed my face and wailed, not caring if my neighbors heard me. Then I called a car service. For the first time in my life, I

THERE WAS NEVER A DAY WHEN MY HUSBAND AND I DIDN’T SAY TO EACH OTHER, “I LOVE YOU.”

felt intense despair, deep in the pit of my stomach. All hope and prayers for Steve to get better vanished.

I didn’t know who to turn to for support. He was my anchor, my go-to person whenever I had a question, an idea, or the littlest, most banal something happened. There

was never a day when my husband and I didn’t say to each other, “Good morning.”

“Have a good night’s sleep.” “I love you.” Steve and Ann, Ann and Steve. Our names, intertwined, always sounded so perfect together. How could I go forward without him?

WE GREW UP a block apart in a New York City blue-collar neighborhood, but we didn’t know each other until we were both teachers at P.S. 20 in Fort Greene in Brooklyn. Thanks to some casual pleasantries, Steve and I discovered we were raised in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools, but never knew one another. I was a grade ahead, which made all the difference as a teen.

Was it love at first sight? Far from it. It was only after, in the early hours of the morning and coming out of deep sleep, a little voice, like a dream, acknowledged Steve’s best qualities that I truly realized them. “He’s good-looking, smart, compassionate and levelheaded with the best common sense on the planet.”

It made me look at him differently. Those

blue eyes. How could I not have noticed them before?

A week later, after dinner at an outdoor cafe followed by a Fellini movie that I didn’t understand, someone held someone’s hand. And that was it. Neither of us ever wanted to let go. And we didn’t. Until.

We were married for 45 years. Not able to have children, we devoted ourselves to our careers, an apartment in Manhattan, a cottage upstate where Steve’s garden flourished, and a beloved dog, Cassie.

We grew our lives together, side by side. Steve developed a successful career as an advertising executive, and I began working in corporate human resources. Even though our salaries were good, having grown up in households where a lack of money was a constant challenge, we saved. We had no pensions. So, we saved even more.

We fantasized about retirement. Then, we thought, we could finally relax. We could be at the cottage more. We could travel more. We’d have time to explore new hobbies. Steve’s dream was to visit Buenos Aires, where his father was born. Living in Europe for a few months was mine. A retirement specialist advised us in our 50s, “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re in great shape.”

Then, before we got to spend the money on all the things we’d been dreaming up for years, Steve died. We’d saved and saved, and it bothers me that he didn’t live long enough to enjoy what we’d worked so hard for, and that we’d never do those things we spent so many days talking about together.

Even though Steve was ill for several years, I never allowed myself to think for one moment that he could die. It’s the part of life and adulthood that I wasn’t ready for. It’s the part I put out of my mind and our life together. “He will get well,” I told myself many times. But too often it doesn’t work out that way. If you’re a woman aged 65 or older, there’s roughly a 2 in 5 chance you’re already widowed, and those odds rise sharply with age. If you’re a man who’s 65, it’s closer to 1 in 8, but those odds increase by over 40 percent by the time you’re 85 or older.

When you get married, you only think about everything that you’ll do together. You celebrate the traditional idea of “two becoming one.” But nothing prepared me for what happens when two become one at the end, and you’re the one that’s left.

MY MOTHER LOST two husbands. My motherin-law lost one. Even though I saw each of them go through the deaths of their husbands, it didn’t give me any real sense of how hard it actually is. They never spoke about their experiences. It seems like few

people do, even though in the United States, between 900,000 and 1.5 million people lose a spouse each year. This includes both men and women. But there was no passed-down wisdom or past conversations for me to call upon when my turn came. Losing your spouse — a life experience that many who have the good fortune to get old have the misfortune to experience — was uncharted territory. And I didn’t have a map to navigate this new reality.

There are the practical things, like accounts and bills and keeping a home up

and running. Steve was in charge of our finances. He was good at it — watched financial news, followed the markets and made conservative decisions. Now I’m in charge. He showed me the files before each of his many hospitalizations. But that wasn’t enough. It’s taken me years to figure out how to manage the accounts myself. At our cottage, neighboring houses are scattered, blackouts are frequent, and I don’t have many friends. There’s no super to fix things, and Steve enjoyed tinkering with things enough to repair them. I’m learning and reaching out to people.

Then there are the intangible things — the stuff that you can’t call a handyman about or research online. When you lose your person, you lose an aspect of your identity — a loss that is also felt during the transition into retirement. You were once a corporate manager with a team, now you’re a lone retiree. You were once a wife, now you’re a widow. It’s a one-two punch. With the loss of personal identity also comes the loss of a schedule, personal connections, to-dos, conversations and goals. What do you do with your day? Who are you? Who do you ask when you can’t answer that yourself?

These practical and intangible realities swirl together like milk into coffee; there’s no parsing them out. One day, I’m learning about the electrical box, and the next, I’m looking at our burial plots, remembering what Steve asked of me. “If I die first, I want you to be with someone. I don’t want you to be alone. But promise me you’ll be buried next to me.” It took me two years to finally choose a double headstone. On the left is Steve’s inscription, and on the right is mine, minus my death date. And life goes on.

It’s taken me four years to accept my new identity — a widow, a retiree, senior, single. Right after my birthday this year, I realized that at 76, I have more years behind me than in front of me. It’s time to enjoy the time I have left. Suddenly, I sleep better and cry less as I plan my future.

I’m figuring out what I want from life. I still want to travel, even if I don’t get to

live in Europe with Steve for a few months. So I’m signing up for trips. I’ll visit my brother and make plans so I’m not alone for the holidays.

This chapter of my life is a second identity and a new stage for me. “Getting back out there” looks different when you’re older. With the aging process, you can’t do some things that you used to. I used to race marathons and triathlons, but I can’t anymore. It’s too much strain on my body. I’m finding out who I am without Steve and who I am in the body that I have now. In my own ways, I’ve learned that there are accommodations

Wild West out there, but it’s mostly good fun and makes me feel like I’m a high schooler instead of a senior woman.

But even when things are feeling “normal,” I can hear a song or see a couple holding hands and find myself in a puddle of tears. When invited to a 50th wedding anniversary, I couldn’t bear the thought that Steve and I would never celebrate another anniversary. Sometimes I want to curl up and die.

EVEN THOUGH I SAW MY MOTHER AND MOTHER-IN-LAW GO THROUGH THE DEATHS OF THEIR HUSBANDS, IT DIDN’T GIVE ME ANY REAL SENSE OF HOW HARD IT ACTUALLY IS.

“Mourning is work and it has a goal,” says Dr. Eric R. Marcus, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. “The goal is to move an internal representation of the loved one from reality to blessed memory. Then, to use that memory to accompany the person through the rest of their life’s journey, encouraging them and supporting their further growth and development. It is difficult work because at first, the loss experience overwhelms the preservation experience. Later, it is difficult because of guilt about proceeding with life.”

But I know I have to move on, even when I feel lost. Even if there’s no replacement, only the memories. And the push and pull to be resilient.

that you make to find new ways to enjoy yourself. That includes giving back, instead of taking things, from life.

I’m making new connections — exploring volunteer opportunities, taking exercise classes and working with a therapist. I’ve even joined online dating. So far, I’ve texted with several men, flirted, graduated to FaceTime conversations, and met two of them in person. One tried to passionately kiss me when we met in a museum. The second man looked like a model and texted me after a day, saying how much he loved me, calling me his soulmate. The next morning, I saw, the site administrator had pulled his profile for inappropriate behavior with several women. It’s like the

After my mother was widowed and until she passed away at 87, she filled her life up. She learned how to read and write in Hebrew, joined a seniors group, tutored children. She stayed active. I am my mother’s daughter.

And although I know Steve will always be with me, he made sure I wouldn’t be alone.

While on life support, using his iPad, he put a deposit on a newly born puppy. He watched videos of the litter and selected the one for us. The morning he passed away, I received a call. “It’s time to meet your puppy.”

I met our puppy, Romeo, the following week on my birthday, and brought him home on Steve’s and my wedding anniversary. He can be a handful sometimes, but I can’t help but adore him. Every morning, he’s cuddled next to me and I whisper, “I love you.”

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THE DOCTOR CAN’T SEE YOU NOW

CAN TECH FILL AMERICA’S PHYSICIAN SHORTAGE?

BY ETHAN BAUER

Three years ago, Lost Rivers Medical Center opened a day care. It was temporary at first, a result of petitions from employees who couldn’t find any other child care options in Arco, Idaho, population 879. The original arrangement could only host six kids at a time, but 19 months later, in December 2023, the hospital opened a dedicated child care facility, serving up to 24 children. CEO Brad Huerta faced questions about his choice to fund the space. Of all the things for one of the most isolated hospitals in the country to invest in, why day care? His answer was easy: It was the best option available to combat looming provider shortages.

“They’re acute everywhere,” Huerta says of the shortages, “but especially acute in rural areas.” Areas like Arco, which is more rural than the definition of rural these days, and classified in the medical industry and by Huerta as a “frontier area.” The closest city, Idaho Falls, is about 70 miles away. When Huerta took over in 2013, he admits he was the third choice for the job. The top two candidates couldn’t fathom living so isolated. “Everyone’s about being rural until it’s time to be rural,” Huerta says. “And that’s the same with doctors.” Which means

he’s gotten creative about recruitment, from the day care to student loan forgiveness programs. He’s had to.

Medical recruitment and retention are major concerns that are becoming a problem everywhere. Specifically, a math problem: Older doctors are retiring, and medical schools aren’t producing enough new

“WE HAVE PROBLEMS IN OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM AND ARE HOPING THAT AI IS A PANACEA. BUT A LOT OF THE ENTHUSIASM IS BECAUSE THERE AREN’T OTHER GOOD OPTIONS.”

doctors to replace them as the American population ages. The Association of American Medical Colleges’ most recent report predicts a physician shortage of 86,000 nationwide by 2036, which could unleash longer wait times, reduced access and worse outcomes for patients. The way people receive care has already changed significantly,

with the American Medical Association reporting private practice physicians are dwindling amid a rise in web-accessed and hospital-centered care that promises to reduce administrative burdens for doctors.

But technology could help fill the gap. “Not only can it help — it will have to,” says Dr. Joseph Kvedar, a Harvard Medical School professor and former president of the American Telemedicine Association. “This shortage is already manifesting. And if we don’t harness tech to do more work for us, we’re never going to get ahead of it.” The key, he adds, will be using different technologies to supplement human-centered care and avoiding an overreliance on tech that further undermines the increasingly fragile trust between patients and providers.

“I am a big believer that technology can augment what we do to make care better,” adds Dr. Shivan Mehta, a gastroenterologist and Penn Medicine’s associate chief innovation officer. However, “just because you throw technology at something doesn’t mean it’s going to work well.”

THE JOB OF “doctor” in the modern, Western sense can be traced to 1910, when educator Abraham Flexner published “The

Flexner Report,” a book documenting the haphazard state of the nation’s medical schools. An outgrowth of Jacksonian America, populism painted universal medical standards as an unfair monopoly, unleashing a range of water healers, herbalists and other alternative practitioners to compete directly with medical doctors.

“You could practice medicine if people believed you could practice medicine,” says Mary Fissell, a medical historian at Johns Hopkins University. “The Flexner Report” wasn’t perfect — critics point out that it codified racist and sexist practices that still impact patients today — but it also set the table for many rigorous medical education and certification standards.

Out of Flexner, many medical education best practices were borne, drastically elevating standards of care. The way people became doctors, and the way patients accessed them, took a formal shape as supply grew to match demand — especially once Medicare was established in the 1960s. Where doctors once visited homes, patients started traveling to offices more frequently. The Medicare program also funneled federal dollars toward residencies and medical specializations, which led to a boom in doctors to meet the new demand from patients. Today, though, the equation isn’t working like it once did, leading to shortages. “You could say,” Fissell says, “that that is in part the very long shadow of Flexner.” The link goes back to those rigorously enforced standards, which are made possible in part by federal funds. Between 1997 and 2021, though, those funds were fixed, effectively limiting the number of new doctors with an artificial cap. The American Medical Association supported this cap, believing that a doctor surplus would devalue medical degrees, until the problem became too big to ignore. Congress approved funding for additional residency slots in 2021, and again in 2023, with proposals to add even more in the years ahead. But for now, the supply is still drastically lagging. “We do not train enough physicians,” Fissell says. “There are not enough medical schools or residency places.” With

an aging population that’s ever more likely to require ongoing access to health care, that’s a problem. And for some places more than others. “Doctors are unevenly distributed,” Fissell says. “There are fewer in rural areas, which worsens shortages.”

Sophie Hofeldt, a pregnant woman in rural South Dakota, was born at a local hospital herself. But a May report from the Kaiser Family Foundation detailed how that local hospital — like many in rural America — had recently closed its birthing unit. Hofeldt was driving almost 100 miles for prenatal care, and would have to make that drive yet again to deliver her baby. She wanted her birth to be as natural as possible, but that meant difficult compromises. “People are going to be either forced to pick an induction date when it wasn’t going to be their first choice,” another pregnant woman told KFF, “or they’re going to run the risk of having a baby on the side of the road.”

“NOT ONLY CAN TECHNOLOGY HELP — IT WILL HAVE TO.”

AS AN INDUSTRY, health care thrives on volume and efficiency. Money is made based on the number of patients who come through the doors, so providers are highly incentivized to see as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible. This tends to result in a much more impersonal kind of care. “The old model where you would have a doctor for a long time, that would get to know you,” Fissell says, “for most people, that’s just a complete fairy tale.” Especially among younger people. A 2021 survey by Accenture, a tech consulting company, found that millennials and Generation Z are nearly six times more likely to switch providers than older Americans.

Short-lived patient-provider relationships come with some interesting side

effects. Wellness influencers are ascending as cheaper, accessible alternatives to traditional medicine. And trust in physicians and hospitals declined by 31 percentage points between 2020 and 2024 alone, meaning that nearly a third of Americans lost trust in doctors in a four-year span. At a time when medical literature is widely accessible, many people, empowered by services from WebMD to ChatGPT, are taking diagnoses into their own hands. To Fissell, it’s a modern echo of Jacksonian America, when medicine was more about belief than standards. Nowadays, though, the key to reversing the trend isn’t new standards; it’s better access to the rigorous, scientific care landscape we’ve built in the last 100 years.

That’s where technology makes its biggest promises, starting with telehealth specifically. It’s become a mainstay post-pandemic, offering doctors and patients a previously unimaginable level of flexibility. According to a study released by the National Center for Health Statistics in 2021, over 80 percent of physicians in office-based settings used telemedicine for patient care, up from 16 percent in 2019. Telehealth can open doors for patients to receive specialty care that used to be limited by geography, while also requiring less of a time commitment; not having to drive to and from the office, plus wait while there, can be empowering and convenient. And research has shown it offers similar quality-of-life benefits for doctors.

Telehealth can be especially helpful in isolated, rural areas, as long as those areas have reliable internet access and as long as insurance companies agree to cover it. “It changes the access equation,” says Kvedar, the telemedicine leader. But it also doesn’t make medicine much more efficient — let alone more human — because “you’re still tying two people up in time, and there’s only so much clinician time to go around.” But other technical solutions could close that gap, too. Kvedar envisions a future where remote monitoring becomes the norm, especially for rural communities. If a doctor treats 100 patients, and she can track their blood pressure and other vitals remotely, she can

focus her time on the patients who need her the most. That way, limited access can be prioritized for the most vulnerable without leaving anybody out.

But no technology embodies both the potential and pitfalls of using tech to bridge health care access gaps as much as artificial intelligence. It provides a microcosm for what can go right when tech makes health care more accessible. And what can go wrong.

AI programs like DeepScribe and Abridge perform “ambient listening” by taking chart notes during appointments, thus freeing up providers to interact more directly with patients. That’s good for patients, who can see their providers face-to-face. It’s also good for providers, who don’t have to spend time between visits charting and can instead see more patients. Adam Rodman, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School leading the school’s work on generative AI, says that’s exactly how AI — and technological solutions more broadly — can be leveraged effectively: as an extension of, rather than a replacement for, human treatment capabilities. “As opposed to what’s largely happening right now — which is smacking AI on a pretty dysfunctional system.”

The danger lurking in the widespread adoption of AI, telemedicine, texting platforms and other technological solutions is the further degradation of trust. Not just because of potential privacy concerns, like potential data breaches and profiteering by revenue-driven tech companies. But also, in a more big-picture way, by making medicine less human than it should be. Kvedar is right that technological solutions will have to be part of the solution to the physician shortage and resulting threats to access. But tech also can’t solve the industry’s issues alone. “We have problems in our health care system and are hoping that AI is a panacea,” Rodman says. “A lot of the enthusiasm is because there aren’t other good options.”

WHEN ARCO’S LONE pharmacist retired at 84, the town couldn’t find a replacement. No one

wanted to move there to take over. That led Huerta to establish a partnership with Idaho State University, whose students could staff Lost Rivers’ pharmacy under remote supervision from licensed pharmacists in Pocatello. Thanks to telemedicine, residents of Arco wouldn’t have to drive 50 miles to the next closest pharmacy for their medications.

Similar programs already exist elsewhere. Project ECHO, for example, which started in New Mexico and has expanded to all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, connects rural primary care doctors with virtual continuing education and specialist consultations. If a rural Nevada doctor can treat heart problems locally, by consulting through Project ECHO with a cardiologist in Reno or Las Vegas, patients

THE MOST RECENT RESEARCH PREDICTS A PHYSICIAN SHORTAGE OF OVER 86,000 NATIONWIDE BY 2036, WHICH COULD UNLEASH LONGER WAIT TIMES, REDUCED ACCESS AND WORSE OUTCOMES FOR PATIENTS.

can avoid traveling to distant cities. If towns in rural Nevada, or places like Arco, didn’t have these kinds of programs, they’d almost certainly lose primary care entirely. It almost happened in Arco shortly after Huerta arrived.

The hospital had declared bankruptcy and needed a $5.5 million bond measure to stage a comeback. “In genuinely rural areas, genuinely critical access areas, a hospital is probably the only clinic you have access to,” Huerta says. It’s an issue that could become more widespread in metro areas, too, as the number of providers shrinks relative to the population seeking care.

At Lost Rivers, one long-term solution is working with staffing agencies. Every hospital, he explains, uses staffing agencies to

broker access with, essentially, “substitute doctors” — that is, doctors who can fill in quickly when needed. These doctors, called “locums,” are exceptionally expensive. But long term, staffing agencies can match hospitals in need with doctors over time, and for much less. A doctor at Lost Rivers, for example, might spend one week in Arco every month before returning home to Boise or Salt Lake City. But that doctor would come back again and again, month after month, meaning patients could build a relationship with that doctor. “I think this is the model of the future, frankly,” Huerta says. But how long will that hold as the shortage worsens? Especially when, in Arco and beyond, access is already threatened in other ways.

Shifting regulations, like Idaho’s recent Medicaid cuts, make effective administration nearly impossible. Even Huerta’s pharmacy innovation was initially rejected by a state board. And private insurers present even greater obstacles. “The big thing killing health care, frankly, is the payers,” Huerta says. “The delay and denial of claims is standard practice.” Their response to telemedicine perfectly illustrates why technology alone can’t fix the access problem. When telemedicine emerged, insurers refused to recognize it as legitimate. “Why would I adopt telemedicine,” Huerta asks, “if I’m not going to get paid for it?” Eventually, they covered it at a reduced rate but excluded certain visits, like those related to mental health treatment. “OK then,” Huerta thought, “what’s the point of having psychiatrists on staff?”

That’s why he’s turned not just to technology for fixes, like the virtual pharmacy, but to human ones, too. Like the day care. So far, that’s been enough. For the first time in his tenure, Lost Rivers is fully staffed. Its turnover rate is dropping. And for that, Huerta credits not technological innovation but something with a pulse — something he tells people when he’s trying to recruit them: “This is the job you’re going to look back on when you’re old and retired and go, ‘Man, I really did something with my life,’” he says. “‘I made an important difference.’”

A SURE THING

WHY YOUNG PROFESSIONALS ARE SWAPPING WHITE COLLARS FOR BLUE

BY NATALIA GALICZA

Ricardo Jimenez didn’t really know what he wanted to be. At one point, he thought he’d figure it out in college, like most young adults in America plan to do. He’d enrolled at the University of California, Merced in August 2020, but just as soon as he started to make sense of the world around him, a pandemic morphed it into something else altogether.

He chose to major in a management, business and economics program to learn the ins and outs of enterprise. Rather than fall to the mercy of a volatile job market, he wanted to own his own business. Be his own boss. But even after he started his second year, he still had no clue what kind of business he wanted to run. The only clear thing was that any student debt would only delay his plans. So he got his commercial driver’s license and took a summer job hauling ice across central California to help pay his way through school.

The job entailed driving tens of thousands of pounds of steel through the Sierra Nevadas, stopping at turnout areas before driving downhill to make sure the heat and friction didn’t kill his brakes. Pulling into

tight parking spaces at gas stations, getting cut off by reckless drivers and blocked in by careless shoppers. Carrying thousands of 20-pound bags from pallets in the truck bed into shops, struggling to catch his breath in the thin mountain air while doing so, then neatly stacking them up in freezers. It was always grueling and often thankless — except for the store owners who

love driving, listening to music and being able to look at the mountains,” he says. “Not a lot of people could say they have that view when they’re working.”

showed their gratitude for a job well done with complimentary soda and gas station snacks. But every time he hopped back into the driver’s seat, he saw miles of open road and canyons of granite that enveloped him. He looked down on alpine lakes and valleys filled with pine trees. And it felt worth it. Peaceful. Freeing, even. “I love the views. I

Jimenez didn’t expect to love trucking. That discovery unlocked a career path he hadn’t seriously considered when he was still in his teens, wondering what his life would look like. But jobs in blue-collar fields like trucking, plumbing and welding are now growing in popularity among young adults trying to find a hold in the job market. A May report by Resume Builder found that 42 percent of Gen Z adults — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are now pursuing blue-collar jobs. For Jimenez, there’s the timeless appeal of work that’s always in demand, that has fewer barriers to entry, that increases his odds of becoming a business owner. Benefits that have become especially attractive at a time when a stable living feels elusive.

Unpredictable tariffs and trade wars have led white-collar businesses to slow hiring across the country, leading to one of the worst job markets in a dozen years. That leaves job seekers in a financial

hole, especially since the average bachelor’s degree holder graduates with around $29,000 in federal student loan debt, and less than half of borrowers pay off their debt during the 10-year standard federal loan repayment plan. A new analysis of U.S. labor data found that unemployment rates for men age 22–27 with college degrees are now roughly the same as those without degrees. In tandem, more and more jobs are becoming at least partly automated through technologies like agentic and generative AI. But in a time where entering the management track at a company is suddenly precarious, blue-collar fields like trucking remain necessary — and can be lucrative. “You could make money. You could control your own destiny. Many people go into trade jobs, end up owning their own businesses, and their jobs can’t be taken away by AI,” says Stacie Haller, a nationally recognized career expert and the chief career adviser at Resume Builder. “AI is not going to style your hair or fix the pipes under your sink.”

With the certainty that demand and a specialized skill set bring, jobs across the blue-collar market are attracting young workers, like electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians. These jobs are estimated to experience anywhere from 6 to 11 percent growth in the coming years, and the blue-collar job sector is estimated to open up hundreds of thousands of jobs.

It didn’t take much college for Jimenez to figure out what he wanted to be. His summer job hauling ice made it clear. He, like anyone thrust into an era of uncertainty, wanted to be secure.

BLUE-COLLAR WORK BUILT America from the ground up. In the West, cities developed around physical economies like the cattle trade, ranching, grain farming and mining. Manual labor proved requisite for a functioning society, so jobs in those spaces were well sought after and respected. It was only in the post-industrial 20th century, when technology and machinery displaced jobs in manufacturing, that white-collar work became an American norm.

With automation to consider, jobs that required service-based skills and human interaction were seen as more secure and professional. The thinking was: Manual labor took an unglamorous toll on the human body, and technology was taking those jobs anyway. Instead of mass producing goods, workers could be developing new technologies, conducting research and thinking deeply — things machines couldn’t yet do. That led to the harmful assumption that intelligent people who want a stable living need to pursue higher education and break into white-collar fields like finance or law or tech. “College became the golden ticket to having a good life. Not so much anymore,” Haller says. “It’s not a golden ticket if you have no money for the next 15 years, paying off your college loan.”

Ironically, it’s now technology that’s bringing those same white-collar jobs to

“AI IS NOT GOING TO STYLE YOUR HAIR OR FIX THE PIPES UNDER YOUR SINK.”

the altar of automation. A report conducted by LinkedIn in May found that 63 percent of surveyed executives at the vice president level or higher agreed that artificial intelligence would take on some workplace responsibilities currently given to entry-level employees. Another study by The Harris Poll found 45 percent of Gen Z job seekers in the United States feel that artificial intelligence has rendered their college education irrelevant in the current job market. Just over 50 percent now view their degree as a waste of money.

Office jobs like data entry, bookkeeping, administration and legal research are most vulnerable. Skilled trades like construction or trucking, though, are among the least threatened careers. “This whole culture was built around white-collar jobs — that if you’re smart, you go to college. Thank

God that’s going away because it’s not true,” Haller says. “There’s no job security anymore. Even if you’re getting paid a lot of money in a white-collar job, your company could get sold, or a tariff could kill your business. But there could be more job security if you go into some of these blue-collar jobs, because you get licensed, you’ve got a skill.”

The renewed interest in labor is compounded by the fact that baby boomers in the workforce are gearing up to retire. There’s demand, there’s supply, there’s even access. Vocational schools train students for specific blue-collar careers and are often far less time-consuming and expensive than a college education. The National Student Clearinghouse found that the percentage of students pursuing vocational training has grown about 20 percent in the last five years and has grown consecutively for the last three. Those students gain wealth quicker than their white-collar counterparts, finishing training within a couple of years and diving directly into jobs with competitive pay. The average entry-level salary for a white-collar worker, according to Glassdoor, starts at $48,000 a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average wage for nonunion blue-collar workers in fields like construction, maintenance, production and transportation is about $24 an hour, or $49,920 a year. That average jumps up to $68,931 for union workers.

There’s also the thrill of working with your hands, spending time outside, taking in beautiful views, using your body and your brain in tandem — qualities workers can’t access from behind a desk. “There’s always been the romance of the open road, especially for young people who are blue collar and haven’t traveled much,” says Steve Viscelli, an economic sociologist who studies work, labor markets, automation and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “There is definitely an appeal in getting in a truck and driving around the lower 48 states. That stuff is real for people who get into the industry.”

Jimenez still thinks about his first trucking job hauling ice across California in the

dead of summer. His hometown, Patterson, which sits in California’s San Joaquin Valley, is flat and familiar. Those first rolling green foothills and rocky ridges he saw on delivery drives made his world suddenly feel as though it had cracked open — like he was a part of something bigger. He chased that feeling.

In 2022, months after his ice delivery gig, he took a chance and bought his own semitruck. He used it to deliver cargo to the Port of Oakland from the Turlock, Oakdale and Modesto area for a month and a half over his winter break. When his classes resumed and he had to focus on being a full-time student again, he hired a driver. A year later, he purchased another semitruck and hired another driver. By the time he graduated at 22, he owned his own trucking company, Fast Boy Logistics. He now has a fleet of three semitrucks and two drivers, both of whom are 22 years old.

Trucking is the dominant mode of transporting cargo in all of North America, accounting for more than 60 percent of transported goods between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Last year alone, truck drivers moved $1 trillion worth of freight — almost as much money as the entire national deficit. They carry everything from office supplies to hazardous materials. The groceries Americans need to feed their families, the gasoline that gets them to work on time, the medication and pharmaceutical equipment that keep them alive. “It’s not just about driving. It’s about carrying a certain type of respect for other people while we’re on the road, keeping a good name for yourself and for truckers in general,” he says. “Everything revolves around trucking.”

MANUAL LABOR COMES with its own challenges. Physical demands mean blue-collar workers are more likely to develop injuries or health complications. Labor conditions are, in many cases, lacking or unjust. And the stigma that trade workers are uneducated or otherwise of low status still lingers. When the No Child Left Behind Act

passed in 2002, success in schools shifted to focus squarely on standardized tests. Performance on these exams dictated ratings and funding for schools, so curricula formed around setting up students for high scores and getting them into four-year universities. That came at the expense of extracurricular classes focused on giving students exposure to trades like woodworking and auto shop. The result was the gradual devaluing and lack of awareness of careers in blue-collar professions. A report by Credit Karma last year found that nearly 20 percent of surveyed Americans who attended or are currently attending a four-year college did not have any knowledge of alternative paths to education like vocational schools. That number jumps to more than 30 percent for Gen Z respondents.

“THIS WHOLE CULTURE WAS BUILT AROUND WHITECOLLAR JOBS — THAT IF YOU’RE SMART, YOU GO TO COLLEGE. THANK GOD THAT’S GOING AWAY BECAUSE IT’S NOT TRUE.”

Blue-collar grew to be a derogatory term, something used euphemistically with “low class” to offend laborers. Pew Research Center reported in March that 35 percent of blue-collar workers say Americans don’t have much — or any — respect for their work. For generations, that’s affected the workers in those roles and even discouraged young adults from entering trades. “Most truck drivers would say it’s a very low-status occupation currently,” Viscelli, the economic sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says.

Even Jimenez would agree that stigma still exists. But he and the other Gen Zers entering trades are looking to shake it. “There’s this conception that truckers are all pretty much dirty, and don’t treat things with respect,” he says. “It’s a real career. It’s an actual job.” School districts across the country

are now backtracking due to the growing demand for blue-collar work among younger generations, spending tens of millions of dollars to reinstate shop classes for students. The Patterson Professional Truck Driving School at the eponymous high school in central California is one example.

The program is one of the nation’s first high school trucking classes; a yearlong course with 180 hours of instruction on professional trucking to prepare students to take a commercial driver’s license exam upon graduation. Retired truck driver Dave Dein created the program and has taught it for the last eight years. According to him, four of his graduates have gone on to own trucking companies. Jimenez included.

Dein remembers being a high school student with no clue of what his future would look like. He failed classes and got into trouble, then started driving a truck in 1988 as a way of paying his way through college. That’s when he found something he felt passionate about, that came naturally to him. He wanted to make sure other young people didn’t lose that option. “We’re losing about 25 percent of our drivers over the next five to seven years, because they’re aging out and retiring, and we’ve done a horrible job as far as building this pipeline for young, well-trained talent,” he says. Dein’s curriculum has made it into classes at more than 50 high schools across the country that aim to teach students the basics of truck driving. It’s helped students like Jimenez forge their own path and pursue their dream of becoming a financially independent business owner — someone in charge of their own fate even in the face of so much change.

Jimenez is now a regular guest speaker for the Patterson Professional Truck Driving School that’s offered at the high school he graduated from. When he finds himself at the front of Dein’s classroom, looking out at students sitting in desks he sat in himself just a few years prior, it almost feels surreal. He talks to them about going from someone who was once entirely unsure of his future to someone who, however minutely, makes the world go round. And that feels good.

DEGREES CHANGE

TODAY’S STUDENTS ARE PAYING MORE, LEARNING LESS AND GRADUATING INTO UNCERTAINTY. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PROMISE OF COLLEGE?

BY CLARK G. GILBERT, TED MITCHELL, DERRICK ANDERSON, BETH AKERS AND DAVID A. HOAG

ILLUSTRATION BY GREG MABLY

THERE WAS A TIME — NOT SO LONG AGO — WHEN THE VALUE OF A COLLEGE DEGREE WAS SELFEVIDENT. IT WAS THE SUREST PATH TO OPPORTUNITY, THE ASSUMED NEXT STEP AFTER HIGH SCHOOL, A MARKER OF MERIT AND AMBITION.

parents planned for it . High schools funneled students toward it. And as a society, we treated college not just as a financial investment, but as a rite of passage, a symbol of upward mobility, and a cornerstone of civic life.

But that consensus is beginning to fracture. Enrollment is down. Public trust is eroding. And for millions of students and families, the basic promise of higher education — that it will lead to a better, fuller, more secure life — now feels uncertain.

This special issue of Deseret Magazine explores three intersecting crises reshaping the future of American higher education: the crisis of cost, the crisis of relevance and the crisis of meaning. For this issue, we asked thought leaders from across the education landscape to engage the most practical — and pressing — questions families now face: Is college worth the price? Will it prepare me for the world of work? And what kind of person will it help me become?

Elder Clark G. Gilbert, commissioner of the Church Educational System for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, opens the issue with a call to re-center higher education on purpose. In a time of rising religious disaffiliation and emotional dislocation, Gilbert argues that faith-based and faith-inclusive universities offer something young people desperately need: a community of belonging, a structure for spiritual exploration and a deeper sense of meaning.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education (ACE), and Derrick

Anderson, the former senior vice president at ACE, write about the broader challenge of relevance. As they see it, the problem isn’t that higher education has nothing to offer — it’s that the sector must evolve. Mitchell and Anderson defend the civic and democratic role of colleges and universities, but argue they must do more to align their programs with the demands of today’s workforce.

Economist Beth Akers offers surprising solutions to the affordability dilemma. She calls it the “ROI problem” — the growing gap between what students pay for college and the real-world value of the degrees they earn. But Akers also offers hope: With better data, clearer expectations and stronger financial literacy, students can still make smart, future-oriented choices.

Finally, David A. Hoag, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, revisits the crisis of meaning from a campus leadership perspective. He reflects on how colleges once saw themselves as moral communities — places where students could develop not just intellectually but spiritually and ethically. Reclaiming that identity, he argues, may be key to restoring trust and transforming lives.

Together, these essays suggest that it’s not too late to save American higher education. But it will require change, namely institutions that are affordable, relevant and grounded in purpose. And it will require a renewed national conversation about what college is for — not just in economic terms, but in moral ones too.

LEARNING WITH PURPOSE

HOW FAITH-BASED COLLEGES ARE SAVING A GENERATION IN CRISIS

BY CLARK G. GILBERT

America ’ s college - age students are facing an emotional and directional crisis. A recent Harvard Graduate School of Education study showed that nearly 3 in 5 young adults feel a lack of purpose in their lives. Half of that same group describe their mental health as being negatively impacted by “not knowing what to do with my life.” The well-documented rise in anxiety and depression in Gen Z has been linked to what a former U.S. surgeon general has called an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.”

Many social scientists, including Robert Putnam, Jonathan Haidt, Jean Twenge and others have linked this rise in anxiety, depression and loneliness to the emergence of smartphones and social media. It is a painful irony that the most digitally connected generation in history is also the most socially isolated. But there is another concurrent trend that may be equally challenging to this generation in crisis — the rise of the religiously unaffiliated.

Social scientists have repeatedly demonstrated the moderating impact religious engagement has on loneliness, lack of purpose and emotional resilience. For example, an American Enterprise Institute survey found that millennials are dramatically more likely than baby boomers to feel lonely. And yet that gap disappears when millennials attend church, live in a familiar community and marry. Why? It seems that

these practices provide secondary spaces for gathering and support that are often lacking for nonbelievers who remain single into adulthood. As for a sense of meaning and purpose, a large empirical analysis using the General Social Survey data shows that those who are confident in God’s existence report a higher sense of purpose than non-

AT A TIME WHEN MANY YOUNG ADULTS ARE TURNING AWAY FROM RELIGION, FAITH-BASED AND FAITH-INCLUSIVE UNIVERSITIES CAN PROVIDE THE BRIDGE TO REAWAKEN SPIRITUAL EXPLORATION, DEEPEN A SENSE OF PURPOSE AND PROVIDE A COMMUNITY OF BELONGING.

believers. This finding is consistent with many other studies, including the Harvard study referenced earlier. Both confirm that those who belong to any religion are more likely to report meaning or purpose than those who do not. Why? Religious participants tend to find purpose in connection to deity, relationships with others and

service, which are more often present in a faith community. Finally, meta-analysis of multiple peer-reviewed studies shows that religiosity is positively related to emotional resilience. Why? Religious engagement provides support structures, mentoring and value systems that help people face emotional challenges.

Maintaining religious belief does not mean that the isolation, distraction and emotional challenges of modern society go away. Yet the data is clear — religion provides one of the greatest moderating influences to these crises, and there are few emergent substitutes. As a New York Times columnist recently described: “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion. Is it any wonder the country is revisiting faith?”

Enter faith-based universities whose religious engagement offers a bridge to faith for college students at the very time they may need it most. Despite the rise in religious disaffiliation, faith-based universities are growing. The National Center for Education Statistics shows that faith-based university enrollment is outpacing the national average. In the educational system in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, net enrollment since 2000 at Brigham Young University, BYU-Idaho and now especially BYU-Pathway has increased by over 100,000 students. Some of that growth has come through innovations in educational access. But from Notre Dame to Baylor, and Yeshiva to BYU, students want to learn in an environment that has clarity of purpose and develops the whole person.

Some of these students are simply searching for the character of conviction. For example, enrollment at Yeshiva University has been overwhelmed by students of diverse faith backgrounds. Why do they come to the nation’s preeminent Jewish university? According to school administrators, these students want to study in an environment where academic freedom doesn’t come at the expense of moral clarity. At other institutions, students want to learn in an environment that engages them spiritually.

RELIGION PROVIDES ONE OF THE GREATEST MODERATING INFLUENCES TO THE CRISES OF ISOLATION AND EMOTIONAL CHALLENGE, AND THERE ARE FEW EMERGENT SUBSTITUTES.

While many in the media are quick to highlight the growing disaffiliation from formal religion, they often fail to note that young adults also remain spiritually aspirational. A 2024 Springtide Research Institute study found that 79 percent of young adults consider themselves part of a religious or spiritual community and 46 percent engage in daily or weekly prayer. Schools that minimize or prohibit such expressions of faith deprive students of such anchoring. Another significant benefit that faith-based universities provide is a sense of belonging and community. Many young adults have grown up in an environment that feels hostile to their beliefs. Coming to a faith-based university provides a safe community of shared identity.

I admire Eboo Patel, president of Interfaith America, who has stated that there is “no pluralism without particularity.” Faith-based universities are one way of preserving pluralism by preserving the particularity of religious expression in American higher education. But this same pluralism can also be preserved when secular institutions make space for faith on their own campuses. Those of us who represent faith-based universities extend our praise and gratitude

to the leaders of secular institutions who provide access and visibility to campus programs such as the Jewish Hillel, Latter-day Saint Institutes of Religion, Catholic Newman Centers and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. These campus communities provide and bolster vital belonging that students desperately need.

This fall, a documentary entitled “HIGHERed: The Power of Faith-Inspired Learning” will launch on BYUtv. This three-part series captures the social good created by the more than 850 faith-based universities who serve over 1.8 million students. We hope others will recognize how faith can moderate feelings of isolation, a lack of direction and anxiousness that plague a generation. At a time when many young adults are turning away from religion, faith-based and faith-inclusive universities can provide the bridge to reawaken spiritual exploration, deepen a sense of purpose and provide a community of belonging that has too often been missing for a generation of college students.

IS A GENERAL AUTHORITY SEVENTY AND COMMISSIONER OF THE CHURCH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM FOR THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.

ELDER CLARK G. GILBERT

A TRADITION OF REFORM

HIGHER EDUCATION’S ENDURING STRENGTH IS ITS WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE

BY TED MITCHELL AND DERRICK ANDERSON

Higher education finds itself under a harsh spotlight. Politicians accuse colleges and universities of ideological bias, irrelevance, financial irresponsibility and cultural insularity. Abrupt federal funding freezes and threats to international student enrollment are generating fear and lawsuits. Republicans appear now to be the main critics of higher education, but Democrats in years past have also raised plenty of complaints.

Understandably, many within higher education have responded defensively, seeking to protect their institutions during what feels like a moment of existential crisis. But let’s acknowledge a crucial truth: American higher education has always faced deep scrutiny, often during times of national unrest, and it has always responded best by reforming, not retreating.

During the Revolutionary War, colonial colleges were disrupted or shut down, sparking early debates about whether they should serve the British crown or the emerging republic. Many of the nation’s Founders, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, played key roles in founding or reforming colleges during America’s formative years. Jefferson requested that his gravestone commemorate his role as the “Father of the University of Virginia,” notably omitting his role as our nation’s third president. That underscored

how deeply he valued education as part of his legacy.

During the Civil War, enrollments plummeted, campuses were commandeered by armies, and leaders questioned whether the classical curriculum could meet the needs of a fractured and industrializing nation. Yet even amid these challenges, President

AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION HAS ALWAYS FACED DEEP SCRUTINY, OFTEN DURING TIMES OF NATIONAL UNREST, AND IT HAS ALWAYS RESPONDED BEST BY REFORMING, NOT RETREATING.

Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land Grant Act into law on July 2, 1862. That set in motion a system of new public universities, focused on agriculture, engineering and related fields, that would significantly accelerate our nation’s role as a global leader in higher education.

World War II and its aftermath sparked seismic change, as universities partnered with the federal government on scientific

research and dramatically expanded access to returning veterans through the GI Bill. The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement led to massive protests and major change as colleges and universities ended racial and gender barriers to enrollment, deepened their commitment to financial aid for disadvantaged students and developed a plethora of new academic and campus programs.

In each case, crisis did not lead to the destruction of higher education. Instead, it was the catalyst for transformation. Indeed, the very fact that higher education is under fire today is a sign of its importance. Americans argue about universities because they care about universities. And many critiques contain at least a particle of truth. Concerns about affordability, access, equity and purpose reflect legitimate pressures on our institutions and the society in which they operate.

This history of crisis and reform is precisely why American higher education is the envy of the world. We have the most diverse, innovative and productive array of colleges and universities ever created.

American higher education supports the most remarkable engine of scientific exploration in human history, churning out Nobel Prizes and scientific and technological breakthroughs with matchless frequency. That record was not achieved through complacency, but rather earned through continuous, and sometimes painful, adaptation.

Commentators often suggest higher education is stagnant or resistant to change. But the past two decades tell a different story — one of mission-driven, and institution-led, reform.

The contours of this story can be seen in a new list of 479 institutions that are leading the way in providing access to students of all backgrounds and ensuring they graduate with a path to strong earnings.

Despite these bright spots, the volume and velocity of recent critiques have created a sense of siege within higher education. It’s tempting, in such a climate, to move into a defensive posture: to double down on our accomplishments, to reject bad-faith attacks, to explain rather than to listen.

But that would be a mistake. This moment calls for two complementary mindsets.

WE MUST LISTEN CAREFULLY TO VOICES THAT MAKE US UNCOMFORTABLE AND DISTINGUISH BETWEEN ATTACKS MEANT TO DISMANTLE AND CRITIQUES MEANT TO REFORM.

First, we must assert that higher education builds America. Our colleges and universities are a cornerstone of this country’s economic vitality, cultural dynamism and democratic potential. We have educated generations of leaders, powered scientific breakthroughs and served as forums for the exchange of ideas in a free society. That is all worth celebrating and protecting.

Second, we must acknowledge that we are, and always should be, in the habit of improvement. Higher education’s greatness lies not in its perfection but in its capacity for self-renewal. The criticisms we face today are surmountable. Many echo past critiques that led to better policies, broader relevance and stronger institutions.

To move forward, we need to shift our posture from defensiveness to determination. We must shed our fear and move forward with confidence in our mission. We must listen carefully to voices that make us uncomfortable and distinguish between attacks meant to dismantle and critiques meant to reform. Above all, we must recommit to improvement for the benefit of learners, whether in matters of affordability or free expression. Student-centered reform isn’t just what politicians and the public are demanding; it’s the right thing to do. We will emerge stronger, fairer and every bit as essential to American life as we have always been. We will be accountable to the public for results.

Reform is not a threat to higher education. Reform is its legacy. The most vital institutions are those that evolve with the times without losing their core values. We’ve done it many times before. We can do it again.

TED MITCHELL IS PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION AND FORMER U.S. UNDERSECRETARY OF EDUCATION. ACE REPRESENTS COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES OF ALL KINDS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE, AND IS THE MAJOR COORDINATING BODY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.

DERRICK ANDERSON IS VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENTERPRISE DESIGN AND POLICY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH, A FORMER FACULTY MEMBER AND ADMINISTRATOR AT ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, AND A FORMER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION.

MAKING EDUCATION PAY

HOW TO MOVE PAST THE COLLEGE-AT-ANY-COST PARADIGM

BY BETH AKERS

Few decisions young Americans make will have as large an impact on their financial lives as whether — and where — to go to college. Yet far too often, those decisions are made with less rigor than we’d use for similarly impactful transactions, like buying a car or taking out a mortgage. We assume college is “worth it” simply because it always has been. But the modern higher education landscape is far more complex than the familiar slogans would have us believe.

Over the past two decades, political leaders on both sides of the aisle have championed college as the surest path to the American dream. One of the most prominent voices in this movement was President Barack Obama, who made increasing college attainment a centerpiece of his domestic agenda. In his 2009 address to Congress, Obama declared that “every American will need to get more than a high school diploma,” and set a national goal for the United States to once again lead the world in college completion by 2020.

This enthusiasm wasn’t unique to Obama. Policymakers from both parties embraced the idea that more college attendance meant more opportunity, and in turn, a stronger economy. The narrative was compelling — and partially true. But the push to increase enrollment came with

too little attention to where students were going, what they were studying, how much they were borrowing and whether they were completing their degrees. In hindsight, it’s clear that the college-for-all movement, while well intentioned, downplayed the complexity of the higher education marketplace and the real risks involved.

A 2024 report by economist (and American Enterprise Institute colleague) Preston Cooper examined more than 50,000 postsecondary programs and found that while the median bachelor’s degree delivers a return on investment of about $160,000, nearly 1 in 4, four-year programs actually result in a negative return. In other words, some degrees are worse than worthless; they leave students worse off than when they started. Yet within the same system, many degrees — especially in engineering, computer science and health-related fields — can deliver returns that exceed $500,000 or even $1 million over a lifetime.

That means that the answer to the oft asked question of “is college still worth it?” is the unsatisfying “sometimes.” Where a student goes to school, what they study, how much they pay and whether they finish all play a decisive role in determining whether their enrollment will pay off.

DESPITE THE FEDERAL and state governments playing a large role in higher education policy, this is an area where oversight has largely failed consumers. In addition to encouraging college attendance without also advising prudence in deciding where to go, what to study and how much to spend, we’ve maintained policies that allow students to borrow through federal lending programs with almost no scrutiny about whether or not the loan will likely be affordable for them to repay.

Under the recently passed budget reconciliation bill, we’ve taken a small step forward on that front. Students will no longer be able to take out federal student loan programs to attend programs where graduates consistently earn less than the median earnings of high school graduates.

This is, by most accounts, a low bar. But at the same time, this new accountability measure marks a dramatic departure from the federal government’s previously agnostic stance on whether higher education should pay dividends for learners. It signals a growing consensus: If taxpayers are going to underwrite the cost of higher education, the programs that benefit should produce real economic value for students and society.

In many ways, this policy change is long overdue. For decades, we’ve allowed institutions to enroll students, charge high tuition and leave them with debt they can’t afford to repay — all financed by American taxpayers through federal student loans. Now, programs with demonstrably poor outcomes will lose access to that pipeline, which could force institutions with low-performing programs to either improve or exit the marketplace. It’s a significant shift — and one that could reshape the postsecondary landscape for the better.

But policy can only go so far. Even with new safeguards in place, students will continue to face a wide range of options with varying outcomes. The most effective guardrail is still personal responsibility: making enrollment decisions based on realistic expectations about earnings and debt, and not on prestige or perceived cultural value.

We need to change the rhetoric around college to reflect the fact that college isn’t a commodity; not all college degrees are created equal. The average outcomes that policymakers and pundits often cite (and celebrate) obscure enormous variation across institutions and fields of study. For example, students who major in education, psychology or the arts — while pursuing noble and important work — often enter low-paying labor markets. If those students attend expensive private institutions and borrow heavily, they may face years of financial hardship as they repay their debt.

On the other end of the spectrum, many associate degrees and technical certificates offer excellent returns, particularly in fields like nursing, information technology and skilled trades. Cooper's research shows that

some sub-baccalaureate programs deliver lifetime returns that rival or exceed those of traditional bachelor’s degrees. Yet these pathways are still underutilized, in part because students often aren’t presented with them as viable options.

That’s a failure of both culture and policy. For decades, we’ve perpetuated the myth that a four-year degree is the only respectable path to success. In doing so, we’ve funneled too many students into programs that aren’t a good fit — either academically or financially — while simultaneously stigmatizing alternatives that may offer better

thinking and recognize that the best college is the one that offers a strong return, not just a fancy name.

Transparency can help. When students have access to clear information about the likely outcomes of different programs, they’re better equipped to make informed decisions. Tools like the College Scorecard — a federal website that provides earnings outcome data for every college and university in the nation — and return-on-investment studies like the one published by Cooper give students the opportunity to shop smart — to compare not just amenities and campus life, but long-term financial implications. But that information only matters if people use it.

AN IMPORTANT STEP TO RESTORE THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IS TO NORMALIZE THE IDEA THAT DIFFERENT PEOPLE WILL BENEFIT FROM DIFFERENT PATHS.

That’s where personal responsibility comes in. The most effective way to avoid the burden of unmanageable debt is to borrow wisely. That means keeping debt in proportion to expected income, being realistic about repayment timelines and choosing programs that deliver strong employment outcomes. Federal student loans are a powerful tool for increasing access, but they’ve also enabled students to make decisions they might not make if they were paying with their own money upfront.

payoffs with lower risk. One of the most important steps we can take to restore the value of higher education is to normalize the idea that different people will benefit from different paths — and that there’s nothing inferior about choosing the one that makes the most financial sense.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS are bombarded with rankings, branding and pressure to attend the most prestigious school they can get into — regardless of cost. Parents and counselors, often with good intentions, reinforce the idea that success depends on a four-year degree. We need to challenge this

At the same time, it’s important to recognize that not every student who struggles to repay their loans made an irresponsible decision. Life after college is uncertain. Careers can stall, economic downturns happen, and personal challenges can derail even the most well-laid plans. That’s why income-driven repayment (IDR) plans exist — and why they play such a vital role in making the federal student loan system safer for borrowers.

Under these plans, monthly payments are tied to a borrower’s income and family size, not the size of their debt. Some borrowers will be excused from making payments altogether. For low-income borrowers or those in volatile job markets, IDR serves as a critical safety net.

Unfortunately, the complexity of IDR has historically limited its impact. Many borrowers don’t understand the options

available to them, or they struggle to stay enrolled due to burdensome paperwork. That’s why recent policy reforms — including those passed through the recent budget reconciliation bill — aim to make these protections more automatic and accessible.

The legislation made several notable changes. First, it codified a new IDR plan for future borrowers. Low-income borrowers who are truly struggling — those earning less than roughly $30,000 annually — will effectively pay nothing on their loans and see no accumulation of interest. At the same time, borrowers with higher incomes and stronger post-college earnings will face more consistent repayment obligations, preventing high-earning graduates from using IDR as an escape hatch.

This rebalancing is an important course correction. The old IDR system had begun to function, in some cases, as a form of backdoor loan forgiveness even for borrowers who were financially well-off. Under the new rules, student loans will better reflect the foundational principle of shared responsibility: When a borrower’s investment in college pays off, they’ll be expected to pay back what they owe. But when it doesn’t, the system will offer support.

The world has changed, and higher education needs to change with it. We can no longer afford to treat college as a cultural assumption or a rite of passage. It must be evaluated like any other high-cost, high-reward investment. The tools to do that exist. The data are out there. Both individual

students and their families need to make use of the data available to make prudent decisions for their financial futures. And we need lawmakers to keep taking steps to ensure that low-performing programs don’t stay on the federal dole with an implicit stamp of approval.

College can still be worth it — but only if we demand more from the institutions we fund, equip students with better data and stronger financial literacy, and hold low-value programs accountable. The era of blind-faith borrowing is over. What comes next must be smarter, clearer and more transparent — for everyone involved.

THE COURAGE TO BELIEVE

SEEKING TRUE UNDERSTANDING IN A CYNICAL WORLD

BY DAVID A. HOAG

From billy joel to Bon Jovi, songwriters in different genres often refer to the importance of “keeping the faith.” In Christian higher education, this has been a central concept long before those songs hit the airwaves. Infusing faith everywhere, from the curriculum to the chapel to codes of conduct, introduces students to a robust Christian worldview and faithful ways of being. Now, more than ever, faith intertwined with higher education is necessary for a hopeful future. As a new generation prepares for a tumultuous world, a faithful education equips students to serve others guided by biblical principles

and reminds us that faith is something not only to keep, but to cherish.

In a cynical world, the concept of faith is often labeled as subjective. Faith is perceived as a floating, abstract idea, an afterthought to the tangible. In education, the discussion of economic value eclipses all else. Professional skills easily take precedence over the deeper aspects of learning which can be harder to quantify — knowledge, wisdom, discernment, a sense of vocation and spiritual formation, as a few examples. In Christian higher education, the central question is not how we incorporate faith into high-performing programs and skills-based curriculum. While those metrics matter, our starting point is

BETH

“WE HAVE TO HAVE A MORE ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF WHAT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EDUCATION AND RELIGION LOOKS LIKE IN THIS COUNTRY, BECAUSE IT IS NOT WHAT PEOPLE THINK IT IS.”

a deeper question: How do we integrate education into faith?

Christian higher education is dedicated to that spiritual investment. Modern higher education focuses on skills needed for a profession, while Christ-centered colleges and universities transcend to something much deeper. At institutions in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, students are preparing for roles in life that may not yet exist. Unlike secular schools that focus primarily on job-specific professional training within each major, our Christian universities encourage students to pursue both their studies and life through the lens of a Christian worldview. Whether a student changes their job or sticks with the same organization for decades, they approach life, and all its challenges, joys and accomplishments, with a biblical worldview. Spiritual formation leads to moral clarity, which allows students to make mission-driven life choices, both personal and professional.

At Wesleyan institutions, for example, the Wesleyan quadrilateral is embraced throughout every program. The quadrilateral emphasizes a guided approach beginning with scripture, applying reason, tradition and experience. Roberts Wesleyan University in Rochester, New York, known as “New York’s Leading University for Character Education,” launched the Golisano Community Engagement Center in 2023. Here, students and the Rochester community come together in fellowship, gathering in shared spaces while also working on projects that contribute to the overall good of the community. As stated on the Roberts Wesleyan website, “The Community Institutes provide community-focused educational solutions and resources to area businesses and organizations seeking real-world learning experiences, insight and transformational partnerships both locally and abroad.”

Approaching education with a faithful perspective is rooted in American higher education. The CCCU often refers to those traditions when addressing cynicism or countering a negative perception of

Christian education. My CCCU predecessor, Shirley Hoogstra, stated that, “Christian higher education, done well, is the antidote to culture decay.”

Religion is central to human flourishing. At the ACE Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities (FBCUs), Eastern Illinois political science associate professor Ryan P. Burge detailed various higher education studies, addressing the general public’s perception of religion in his presentation, “Religion and Human Flourishing. What the Data Says.” As Burge stated in ACE’s summary of the event, “We have to have a more accurate representation of what the relationship between education and religion looks like in this country, because it is not what people think it is.”

Burge cited numerous studies, including Pew Research and the Springtide Survey of Young People and Religious Life, which consistently demonstrate that religious individuals, such as those who regularly attend church services, consistently report higher levels of happiness and lower levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness in their lives. To those of us who are believers, it should come as no surprise that faith is the key to flourishing.

CCCU member institutions advance flourishing in society when they exemplify the courage to remain committed to the biblical tradition. In a webinar hosted by the Heterodox Academy, Art Carden, professor of economics at Samford University, states that “the way a lot of us at Samford (approach the classroom) is on the conviction that what we’re doing at Samford is discovering the principles governing the kind of world God created, whether that’s in the biology department or the physics department or the math department or the economics department. Johannes Kepler was alleged to have said he was just thinking God’s thoughts after Him — that is a lot of what we are doing.”

But is it enough? In an impatient world filled with instant answers, how do we as Christian educators remind the world to “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation,

and be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12), while addressing demands and responding to current societal pressures?

CCCU member institutions are finding innovative ways to integrate faith and learning that reinforce that faithful commitment. At Oklahoma Baptist University, an upcoming cybersecurity lab offers students hands-on experience executing and defending against cybersecurity attacks. Throughout their work in the lab and in the traditional classroom, OBU students access “a distinctive blend of applied computer science, liberal arts education and ethical training grounded in faith,” to quote the university’s press release. OBU cybersecurity students gain academic learning and skills-based training, while also engaging with ethical formation shaped by Christian faith and morality — preparing them for impactful careers and meaning-filled lives shaped by faith-guided wisdom and discernment.

This approach to education, combining both knowledge and wisdom, is more important than ever today in the age of generative AI. As Tyler M. Rosas wrote in a March 2025 article for Christian Scholar’s Review, "Knowledge alone isn’t enough. Consider the difference between knowing about God and knowing God Himself. One is information; the other is transformation. This same principle applies across every field of study at a Christian college.” Faith-based institutions dig deeper than knowledge transmission and skill development — they challenge students’ minds, yes, but they also know the importance of shaping hearts and souls.

Christian colleges and universities accomplish this formative work through subjects often considered secular, but they are also equipped to offer unique programs inherently shaped by the Christian tradition. At Baylor University, the Great Texts program invites students to study “foundational works of literature, theology and philosophy,” spanning from the literary tradition of the ancient world (including the Bible itself alongside Homer, Virgil, Confucius and more) to the 20th

century (where the reading list is replete with recognizable names such as Sigmund Freud, C.S. Lewis, Ernest Hemingway and Toni Morrison). Students studying Great Texts engage in in-depth analysis and writing alongside “formation in practical wisdom” shaped by the Christian faith. They graduate prepared for diverse future career paths, from the law to ministry, and with a mature Christian worldview, having deeply considered enduring questions of morality, justice, grace and truth.

packaging meals for those in need, supporting hurricane relief, and more. To date, PBAU students have volunteered more than 4 million hours through Workship, serving as the hands and feet of Jesus as they develop into lifelong servant leaders.

As we can see, faith-integrated formation transcends the classroom. From chapel to athletics to residence halls, Christian colleges and universities provide opportunities for meaningful student development. Calvin University, for example, offers undergraduate students with Christian formation in the form of a unique residence option: Koinonia House, named after the Greek term for Christian unity and fellowship.

NOW, MORE THAN EVER, FAITH INTERTWINED WITH HIGHER EDUCATION IS NECESSARY FOR A HOPEFUL FUTURE.

Many CCCU member institutions also invite students to step outside themselves, developing their moral character and biblical worldview in service of others. As one example, Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Workship community service program combines the words “work” and “worship” to model for students how to respond to the world’s needs with Christlike love. Through Workship, PBAU students engage in a wide range of service activities: tutoring K–12 students in their local community,

The residents of Koinonia House commit to spend time in community, with weekly house meals, regular Bible study and prayer, and one retreat per semester. At the same time, they commit to service, including specific household responsibilities and 20 hours of community service each semester. While living in Koinonia House, students engage in intentional reflection on faith, justice and community living, developing a deeper sense of what it means to live morally in community with one another.

These examples, just a few among many at CCCU institutions, remind us that religion and faith are thriving. Christian higher education institutions demonstrate that moral integrity and Christian values are vital to both professional and personal development. Moral behavior based upon Christian principles and values leads to both tangible and intangible outcomes, expanding beyond university walls to benefit surrounding communities and advance the overall good of society. All around the nation, Christian colleges are keeping faith alive for the flourishing of all.

DAVID A. HOAG IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL FOR CHRISTIAN COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES. HE

ILL ACKMAN has long been one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable donors. The billionaire hedge fund manager, who made his name with high-profile activist investments through his firm Pershing Square Capital Management, gave millions over the years to Democratic candidates

But in the months following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Ackman began to publicly reassess those allegiances.

A graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Business School, Ackman was among a group of prominent donors, but perhaps the most prominent and the most outspoken, who blasted the university’s initial response to the October 7 attack. In the weeks that followed, Ackman called for the release of the names of students who had signed a pro-Palestinian letter and questioned the university’s commitment to combating antisemitism. He threatened to withhold funding and, seemingly overnight, went from staunch Democrat to sounding like Joe Rogan, decrying left-wing orthodoxies.

His public campaign reached a tipping point on December 5, 2023, when University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, testified before Congress in a hearing on campus antisemitism. Under questioning from Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, Magill repeatedly declined to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the university’s code of conduct, insisting that it would depend on the “context.”

For Ackman, the moment was galvanizing. In subsequent interviews and posts, he expressed disillusionment not only with his alma mater, but with the Democratic Party itself.

Ackman’s journey — from elite Democratic donor to MAGA ally — has mirrored and, in some ways, fueled a broader political realignment around higher education. What began as a donor revolt against elite universities became a central front in Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.

From his first day back in the White House, Trump made good on those promises, launching an aggressive campaign against America’s premier universities, in particular Harvard and Columbia. The campaign became a coordinated blitz — civil rights investigations, funding threats and sweeping executive orders — and has spread far beyond the Ivy League. Dozens of universities have received letters requiring internal records — admissions rubrics, DEI budgets, even syllabi — with deadlines measured in days rather than months. Under pressure to verify compliance on race-neutral admissions, for example, University of Virginia President James Ryan chose to resign, reportedly at the request of the Justice Department.

As Ackman’s story demonstrates, beneath the bedlam lay a genuine sense that American universities have become increasingly detached from the society they serve — rejecting the open inquiry that is essential to both science and liberal democracy, while engaging in victimology and race-centered policies that, critics argued, violated civil rights statutes and the 14th Amendment.

Meanwhile, the very premise of American higher education has come under scrutiny, even attack. Concerns about the cost-to-value ratio of a traditional college degree have grown, alternative educational pathways have gained traction, and calls for accountability have grown louder, resulting in state legislators, trustees and donors like Ackman demanding reforms and results — or else.

And yet, there is a growing concern that Trump’s tone and tactics may be going too far, or may result in a backlash that could harm colleges and universities that are religious, or have a decidedly conservative mission.

“The administration is right on the substance,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, “but out of understandable frustration they short-circuit due process, trample established norms, and set hugely troubling precedents.”

What would happen, Hess wonders, if a radically leftist candidate were to take office in 2029 and “decides to reverse Trump’s executive actions on gender or DEI, and then start setting the Education and Justice departments on the University of Florida?”

For years, Hess and other conservative thought leaders have raised concerns about “groupthink, bias, political activism, and squeezing out scholarly discourse.”

“We have been alternately ignored and belittled,” Hess says. “Higher education refused to have a reasonable conversation. If you do that long enough, what we’re having now is an unreasonable conversation.”

The question is not whether change was needed, but whether the tone and tactics of the current administration will produce critical reform — or just more cycles of reprisal.

this all comes at a time in which trust in higher education is in free fall. Gallup polls show the share of Americans expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education dropped to 36% in 2024, down from 57% in 2015. The decline was most dramatic among Republicans. But it wasn’t just a partisan shift — confidence

declined by an average of 21 percentage points across all major subgroups, including differences in education, race, gender and age.

The Gallup data highlights three distinct concerns: ideology, relevance and cost. Among those who expressed little or no confidence in higher education, 41 percent cited political bias and ideological pressure; 37 percent pointed to poor job preparation or irrelevant degrees; and 28% blamed high costs and student debt.

ultimately advised by police to stay off campus for his own safety. He and his wife, also a faculty member, resigned and later settled with the university.

Around the same time, Yale University faced backlash over an email from lecturer Erika Christakis, who gently questioned whether administrators should be instructing students on Halloween costumes. A viral video captured her husband, sociologist Nicholas Christakis, being berated by student protesters. More recently, at Har-

“The administration is right on the substance, but out of understandable frustration they short-circuit due process, trample established norms, and set hugely troubling precedents.”

“There’s no way even President Trump would be attacking higher education the way he is unless he had some political cover to do it,” says Paul Carrese, director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. “I think it’s fair to say that higher education has lost majority confidence.”

Several incidents are often cited by conservatives as turning points. The first came in 2015 at the University of Missouri, where protests erupted after a series of racially charged incidents and a perceived lack of administrative response. Two years later, in what became a flash point in discussions about “wokeness” and “cancel culture,” Evergreen State College in Washington organized a “Day of Absence,” during which students, faculty and staff gathered off-campus to highlight the contributions and experiences of people of color and to call attention to systemic racism. When biology professor Bret Weinstein objected on principle, he was met with protesters in a classroom and was

vard, evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven came under fire for publicly affirming the biological definition of sex — while also, she says, supporting transgender rights and dignity. Graduate students denounced her and refused to work with her. She left the university in 2023.

When professors feel silenced, it’s hardly surprising students do too. A 2022 survey across all 13 University of Wisconsin campuses drew more than 10,000 responses. Students were asked whether instructors created an environment where they felt free to voice unpopular views. Twenty-four percent said “never” or “rarely,” and 38 percent said only “sometimes.” Fifty-seven percent said they had, at times, held back in class rather than speak up, some citing fear of conflict with other students or hurting their course grade, and 31 percent worried someone might file a complaint against them. Among students who said they had felt censored, 67 percent were conservative and 17 percent liberal.

until the last few years, relatively few people openly questioned the return on investment of a college degree. High school students had long been urged to “go to college” as a general path to success, with little emphasis on specific goals or alternatives. Not anymore. A recent Vox headline captures the new tone: “The end of ‘college for all’: There’s more than one thing to do after high school.”

economics, recently ranked “The 50 Most Economically Disastrous College Majors.”

The five worst on Sanwal’s list are performing arts, art history, anthropology, philosophy and sociology. These and 45 additional majors, he argues, offer low early-career salaries, high underemployment, limited career pathways without additional credentials and poor returns on investment relative to student debt.

“We are alternately ignored and belittled. Higher education refused to have a reasonable conversation.

If you do that long enough, what we’re now having is an unreasonable conversation.”

Most Trump voters already knew this. In 2022, Pew Research reported that 51 percent of registered Democratic voters held at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with just 37 percent of Republicans.

From 2018 to 2024, the percentage of American teens planning on a traditional four-year college degree dropped from 73 percent to 45 percent, according to surveys conducted by the American Student Assistance. Over that same period, interest in nondegree pathways — such as vocational training, apprenticeships and tech boot camps — tripled from 12 percent in 2018 to 38 percent in 2024.

Some of the shift away from four-year degrees comes down to simple math. Adjusted for inflation, tuition at four-year state universities jumped 51 percent from 2000 to 2020, far outpacing a 15.5 percent gain in real household income.

And even among those who are headed to a traditional university there is increasing awareness that the choice of a major matters. Anand Sanwal, co-founder of CB Insights and a prominent voice on startup

Then there is the gauntlet of dubious general education. Michael B. Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, cites an abundance of “fluff courses such as Vampires: History of the Undead, Monsters of Japan, Social Media and Hashtag Activism, and The World According to Pixar.” All of these titles, he notes, appeared in recent college catalogs and counted for general education or distributional credit. “Most young people already know how to use the internet for such distractions,” Poliakoff argues. “They don’t need an expensive college to help them explore pop culture.”

trump ’ s return to power brought an aggressive reversal of Obama- and Biden-era higher ed policies. His administration moved to enforce a strict reading of civil rights laws — banning diversity, equity and inclusion policies, reversing protections for transgender students under Title IX and launching investigations into elite universities’ compliance with new interpretations of the law.

Some of the resulting conflict has been laid at the feet of Congress, which for years has failed to clarify its own civil rights laws or to adapt higher education policy to emerging social and economic realities. The federal government spends about $60 billion annually on university research and expects to lose roughly $400 billion on student loans over the next decade, with another $355 billion in Pell Grants. Given these vast sums, many experts find Congress’ lack of oversight baffling.

One of the few levers for controlling these funds is the enforcement of civil rights laws. But Congress has given the executive little guidance on these fronts. Lawmakers are supposed to reauthorize major legislation regularly, but when they fail to act, economic and social shifts quickly erode the meaning of laws that once seemed clear. The Higher Education Act, last reauthorized in 2008, became overdue in 2015, leaving major policy questions unresolved and effectively ceding authority to the president. Courts and agencies are then forced to guess and improvise, often resulting in successive presidential administrations dismantling each other’s initiatives.

Title IX, for example, hasn’t been significantly updated since it was written in 1972, and its much-admired 37 words are filled with ambiguity. The past 14 years have brought a dizzying roller coaster of shifting interpretations — from Obama to Trump to Biden and back to Trump — on how Title IX applies to campus sexual harassment, due process and transgender athletics. “The entire point of the legislative branch is to synthesize the competing interests of the people,” argues Harvard political philosopher Danielle Allen. “The legislative branch needs to be responsive to the people and functional. It needs to deliver negotiated solutions to shared problems. When it can, it produces a sort of synthetic pathway we can stay on with stability. When it ceases to function, the executive steps into the vacuum because people are frustrated.”

So when Trump entered that vacuum in January, no one was surprised to see another

cycle of policy reversal. What was surprising this time, however, was its speed, pace and intensity. Within weeks, the Education Department began sending letters to dozens of schools demanding documentation on ways they had addressed antisemitism, racial discrimination and gender equity violations. Campuses got letters demanding internal records — admissions rubrics, DEI budgets, syllabi.

At the same time, Education Secretary Linda McMahon moved swiftly to dismantle her own department. By mid-March 2025, she had cut the workforce from about 4,100 to 2,200 employees, including steep reductions to the Office for Civil Rights and the closure of seven of its 12 regional enforcement offices.

That hollowing- out might have impeded the frenetic action that followed. But it seems that much of the enforcement activity shifted to the Department of Justice. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division launched and even concluded some investigations into universities within weeks and frequently stepped in to pursue campus cases. Meanwhile, Education Department cases also ran unusually fast, resolving in weeks rather than months or years. Observers noted that many cases seemed almost predetermined before the investigation began. Concessions and compromises that might normally follow prolonged dialogue were demanded publicly and within a shorter time frame, which critics argue left little room for due process — or genuine inquiry.

The dominos were beginning to fall. But at what cost?

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s tax-exempt status,” Trump posted on Truth Social in May 2025. “It’s what they deserve!” Critics noted that such threatening words, coming from a president, might unsettle Republicans who remember when President Barack Obama in 2009 joked about using an IRS audit to settle a score — or when, four years later, IRS official Lois Lerner was caught slow-walking tax exemptions for tea party groups opposed to her boss. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has long criticized universities for abusing due process and free speech norms, with Harvard often topping the list. This year, FIRE also condemned the Trump administration’s actions against Harvard, calling them unmoored from legal norms, regulations or precedent. “This process-less approach is a loaded gun for partisan administrations to target institutions and individuals that dissent from administration policies and priorities,” the group said.

By June, accrediting bodies began receiving calls from administration officials urging them to police ideological bias. A federal registry labeled institutions as either cooperative or noncooperative. As faculty unions raised alarm, trustees debated new codes of conduct.

But the pressure strategy did produce results. Columbia University’s landmark deal on July 23 to pay a $200 million fine and make sweeping changes to its campus policies was followed on July 30 by a similar deal with Brown University.

“A weaponized IRS will be an equal opportunity tool for future presidents to abuse, as if the matter of Lois Lerner was not sufficient warning.”

It’s axiomatic that norms trampled in one administration have less power in the next. Obama may have been joking about the IRS in 2009, but the humor falls flat when it actually happens.

Both sides have contributed to this erosion. In 2012, Obama announced a program granting protection to immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children — after saying at least 22 times that he lacked such authority. “I’m not a king,” he said. “I am the head of the executive branch of government. I’m required to follow the law.” Throughout the 2020 primary and general campaigns and as late as February 2021, Biden had said he had no authority to forgive student debt by “signing with a pen.” But then he did, before the courts later struck that action down.

Meanwhile, the denizens of college campuses are taking notes. FIRE President Robert Shibley points to a troubling connection

“There’s no way even President Trump would

be attacking higher education the way he is unless he had some political cover to do it.

I think it’s fair to say that higher education has lost majority confidence.”

When the Trump administration threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status, Michael Poliakoff of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni — no defender of Harvard, which he called “among the worst offenders, with cancellations, shout-downs, disruptive encampments, and egregious antisemitic conduct” — still issued a warning. “The specter of weaponizing the IRS should strike alarm across the political spectrum,” he wrote.

between norm erosion on campus and in government. He warns that disregarding due process and free inquiry teaches students a lasting lesson: that power, not principle, prevails. “The message that’s been sent is power politics,” he told me. “Whoever holds authority can do whatever they want. You can appeal to the rules, but it won’t avail you. Universities have done a really good job of communicating that to their students.”

And vice versa. When Obama or Biden disclaim authority only to assert it later — or when Trump grabs power, signing off with a cheerful “thank you for your attention to this matter” — students, professors and administrators take notes. And the lessons everyone is both learning and teaching echo those taught in the most radical critical theory readings: that all institutions are masks for raw power, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

the idea that norms and institutions are merely masks for power underlies many of the conflicts roiling American campuses — a clash between the tradition of Western liberal democracy and a rigid ideology that rejects the common ground of open inquiry and compromise, replacing it with identity-based claims of oppression and victimhood.

In his Washington Post op-ed responding to attacks for having written critically of pediatric transgender policy, MIT professor Alex Byrne called for a campus culture “animated by the scientific spirit — a willingness to question assumptions, to seek new evidence, and to resist pressure to conform from our in-group. That is exactly what has been missing from the debate over youth gender medicine, and we liberals must take some blame. The more liberals who can rise above tribal loyalties and publicly dissent, the better.”

That passage is essentially a mission statement of the Heterodox Academy, or HxA, a growing organization advocating for free inquiry and intellectual diversity on campus. Since 2022, HxA has been led by President John Tomasi, a political theorist who spent 27 years as a professor at Brown before taking the role. Tomasi says HxA loves American universities the way Socrates loved Athens: “We criticize them when we have to, only because we love them and want to make them better.”

HxA was founded in 2015 in response to growing concerns about ideological conformity in academia. It began as a network of professors advocating open inquiry and

constructive disagreement, later expanding into a nonprofit with nearly 7,000 members across all disciplines. It aims to strengthen the academy’s commitment to truth-seeking through greater tolerance of diverse perspectives. Not surprisingly, Carole Hooven and Alex Byrne are both HxA members.

But it’s not just heterodox scholars and public intellectuals who are seeking reforms. One of the most powerful voices in the debate have been state legislatures.

Texas is among several states that have recently moved to assert greater control over public universities. By 2023, so many states were banning diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that think tanks and media outlets created “anti-DEI trackers” to monitor the trend. Now, the focus has shifted. Many conservative states are actively restructuring how universities are governed — and what they teach.

In May 2025, Indiana’s Legislature upended its state university system by giving the governor authority to appoint all nine members of the Board of Trustees, reducing faculty governance to an advisory role, imposing “productivity reviews” on tenured professors and directing the state’s Commission for Higher Education to eliminate low-enrollment degree programs — which it did, with over 400 degree programs now on notice.

A month later, Texas enacted legislation targeting the trifecta of concerns highlighted in the Gallup data: ideology, relevance and cost. The law shifts significant power to university governing boards, which will now appoint not only presidents but also key administrators such as deans, vice presidents and provosts. It also mandates five-year reviews of general education courses and degree programs,

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s tax-exempt status. It’s what they deserve!”

In January 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took control of New College of Florida, a small taxpayer-funded liberal arts school with fewer than 1,000 students. He appointed new trustees with a mandate to transform the college into a “great books” institution focused on the Socratic method and the Western liberal tradition. Since then, the Florida Board of Governors has enacted sweeping changes to general education requirements across all state university campuses. In May, the board also rejected a nominee for president of the University of Florida after Republican lawmakers opposed the candidate’s advocacy of DEI programs.

focusing on workforce alignment and civic competence.

Jeffrey Adam Sachs, an analyst at PEN America, an advocacy group that supports writers and defends academic freedom, warned that the new Texas law would “significantly curtail the content of general education courses and sideline faculty in every major aspect of university life — from curriculum design to hiring decisions to campus governance.” What Texas lawmakers want, Sachs argued, “is a general shift of university power upwards, from faculty to administrators, from administrators to the governing board, and (wherever possible) from the governing board to themselves.”

Sachs starts from the premise that state universities should be governed from the bottom up and the inside out — with faculty at the helm and trustees kept at a distance. This doctrine dates to the 1915 founding of the American Association of University Professors, which enshrined tenure and academic freedom as core principles.

But John Tomasi notes that the AAUP’s founding documents also came with a warning. “The AAUP said that if the professors and the administrators won’t honor those sacred commitments for themselves,” Tomasi told me, “then other people will come in to do it for them. And those people will not know as much about universities. They may not love universities. And they may find that those kinds of remedies are much worse than what could have happened if the professors had been more consistently responsible in making their universities great themselves.”

At a Heterodox Academy panel in June 2025, Mark Bauerlein, an emeritus professor at Emory University and a trustee at the newly overhauled New College of Florida, voiced a heresy. Trustees at state universities, Bauerlein said, are “state officers” whose duty is “to the citizens of Florida, not to the campus.” Trustees already have the authority to govern, he said: “It’s already there. Regents and trustees just haven’t exercised their power for a long time.”

Back in Washington, even an inattentive Congress sometimes does take action. Thanks to a procedural quirk, lawmakers can pass one bill each year by simple majority — bypassing Senate filibusters and committees and sharply limiting debate and amendments. These “reconciliation bills” are now routinely crammed with nearly everything imaginable, constrained only by the rule that each provision must have some remote connection to the budget. This year, in a nod to their commander in chief, Republicans dubbed it the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

In addition to some controversial changes on student loans, the bill introduced a major innovation for higher education

accountability. Under the new law, federal student aid eligibility is now linked to graduates’ economic outcomes. Colleges must report earnings and compare them to those of local high school graduates. For example, to retain access to federal loans and Pell Grants, an anthropology program must show its average graduate meets a reasonable debt-to-earnings threshold and earns at least as much as nearby high school graduates with no further formal education.

This data, presumably compiled by the embattled Education Department, will appear on an online “college dashboard,” showing cost, graduation rates, debt and post-graduation income. That same Education Department will then presumably be asked to weed out laggards. Ten years ago, holding universities accountable for their graduates’ outcomes was contentious on both sides of the aisle. Now it’s federal law.

The growing emphasis on measurable results is no surprise, given that two of the top three public concerns in Gallup polling — career relevance and cost — reflect deepening doubts over the juice-to-squeeze ratio of a four-year degree. Adjusted for inflation, tuition at public four-year universities has climbed 109 percent over the past 30 years. A 2017 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that for every dollar increase in federal student loan limits, tuition rose by 60 cents.

Higher education researcher Robert Zemsky of the University of Pennsylvania has long been pushing for a three-year bachelor’s degree. His inspiration came from a student survey at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, which included an open-ended question asking students their thoughts on higher education. About one-third responded bluntly, calling college a “waste of my time and money.” After further investigation, Zemsky identified general education requirements — packed with courses students neither needed nor wanted — as the main culprit. But when Zemsky first proposed the three-year degree 12 years ago, accreditors quickly rejected the idea, insisting, “A college degree is four years.”

Three years ago, Zemsky was encouraged by Lori Carrell, now chancellor of the University of Minnesota Rochester, to try again. Between them, they knew plenty of college presidents. “So we began making phone calls,” Zemsky said. “Within two weeks, we had 10 of these people who were willing to try it.” As of July 2025, Zemsky said, 58 institutions are actively developing three-year bachelor’s programs, with another 12 expressing interest. He and his allies hope to reach 200 by 2027. The accreditors are now their biggest fans, he said.

some proposed reforms — and reformers — seem, at least on the surface, to be working at cross purposes. The accountability measures just outlined aim to cut costs by eliminating fluff and to ensure marketable majors with measurable outcomes. But many reformers are after something more: a renewed appreciation for the great books, thinkers and arguments that they see as the once-shared foundation of liberal democracy.

One such project is Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, or SCETL, launched in 2016 with $3 million from the state’s Republican-led Legislature and governor. An independent school within ASU — with its own faculty and degree programs — SCETL’s mission is to promote intellectual diversity, civil discourse and civic leadership. Though initially funded on a party line vote, the school now enjoys bipartisan support and has doubled its funding base, even as partisan control in this purple state has shifted.

The founding director of SCETL is political theorist Paul Carrese. The SCETL vision, Carrese told me, is the kind of education that he got at Middlebury College from 1985-1989. Middlebury was never a conservative college. But it did give him a “great books” education, centered in the Western liberal tradition and spanning political science, history, philosophy, classics and literature. In recent decades, Carrese laments, those fields have changed for the worse. The humanities are now immersed

in radical theory, he says, while social sciences divide time between radical theories and obsession over data. What got lost, Carrese says, is “the common ground for thinking about political life, for political disagreement, for being self-governing citizens, for understanding the constitutional political order. That’s gone. It’s certainly not required in most universities anymore, and there isn’t a friendly home for it.”

gendered oppression, and the uneven and fitful progress the nation has made toward fulfilling its proclaimed founding goals of liberty for all.” Thus, he says, “civics may find its home in the interdisciplinary studies (i.e. race and gender studies) that have always embraced the social commitments that best distinguish civics from citizenship education.”

“I would call it malicious compliance,”

“An education for civic purpose

requires a lot of

things universities haven’t been doing — viewpoint diversity, the ability to support civil disagreement on campus, an understanding of the history and institutions of this country, and the fundamentals of constitutionalism.”

SCETL can only succeed, Carrese said, if it stands apart from campus politics, answering directly to the board of trustees. Without that, he warns, the gravitational pull of the existing campus will distort the orbit of the new program. As a cautionary example, Carrese points to a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which Timothy Messer-Kruse, a professor of ethnic studies at Bowling Green State University, argues that the new civics initiatives at state universities cannot be left to conservatives.

Messer-Kruse’s essay is not directly aimed at the SCETL model. He’s focused on a softer, more vulnerable legislative mandate for “civics education” in the general education curriculum. Messer-Kruse suggests that administrators can “simply slide the new civics mandates into existing cultural-diversity courses that already spend a large proportion of their time examining issues of immigration, racial and

Carrese said of Messer-Kruse’s suggestion. “For him, there is no such thing as a neutral foundation or common ground citizenship education. … Everything is ideological in that narrow sense all the way down.” Carrese contrasts Messer-Kruse’s perspective with that of Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen. She’s “pretty clearly” politically on the left, Carrese says, and Allen believes that teaching American civic education in a liberal arts spirit means acknowledging that there is “something good in some dimension about America’s founding principles.” That simple acknowledgement is a daunting hurdle for many academics, he notes.

which brings us to Allen’s recent call for a new social contract for higher education. Allen looks back to the frayed consensus that was forged just after World War II — at a time when the success of the Manhattan Project and fear of Sputnik convinced American elites that national survival

depended on massive research aimed at “economic prosperity, national security and improvements in health.”

That focus on technology masked a deeper deficit of purpose, Allen told me. Prosperity and innovation became ends in themselves.

“An education for civic purpose,” Allen said, “requires a lot of things universities haven’t been doing — viewpoint diversity, the ability to support civil disagreement on campus, an understanding of the history and institutions of this country, and the fundamentals of constitutionalism.”

“There’s been a certain kind of anarchy about how young people get formed,” Allen said. “And in that anarchy, it’s fair to say that a critical theory-based approach to understanding social systems has come to dominate the formation of young people.” Those critical-theory approaches teach, in a nutshell, that democratic institutions are mere masks of raw power, and that liberal democracy is no less (and possibly more) oppressive than other social systems.

Any lasting reform, she says, must recognize that universities are embedded in real communities and accountable to real people — not just to abstractions of justice or power. Localized accountability makes universities interdependent with their stakeholders, as equal partners. Universities shouldn’t be wholly subordinate to state governments, boards of trustees or donors. Neither are they wholly independent. The friction of that interdependence, she suggests, is the laboratory of democracy.

“The moment you say that, the whole nature of the conversation changes,” Allen said. “This doesn’t mean that left leaning political theories are now ruled out of court. To the contrary, in so far as they’re developed, they too have to give an account of how they’re actually good for American society. That changes the dynamic of the conversation. It opens up space for other people to say, here’s my vision about what’s good for American society. And young people have to learn how to navigate choices about the future of their institutions.”

In northwest England, a soccer club fights for membership in the world’s top league

BY ETHAN BAUER

and for an ideal its new owners hope will resonate around the world.

TWO HOURS UNTIL KICKOFF,

THE VOICE OF LAW AND ORDER

echoes across 21,000-seat Turf Moor stadium. Unaided by any sort of loudspeaker or microphone, a constable barks instructions to a battalion of cops — at least 1oo strong, dressed in reflective yellow — about crowd control. Around him, sprinklers spritz the immaculate grass. It’s all rather calm, even serene, but make no mistake: The police battalion is here for a reason. Fans recently stormed the field after a big win. Rumors suggest they will again.

Now the players begin to arrive for the day’s contest, the final game of the campaign in the second-tier English Championship League. Professional British soccer is broken down into four tiers, with every team trying to claw toward the top level: The English Premier League — the most valuable, most competitive association in the world’s most popular sport. The players, every one of them eager to prove they belong at the top, hustle toward the locker room at Turf Moor, home of Burnley

Football Club, the heart and soul of this town of under 80,000, a halfhour north of Manchester. Once inside, they’ll no doubt hear the voice of British R&B star Natasha Bedingfield whose classic anthem of possibility, “Unwritten,” has become an unlikely soundtrack to their season. Meanwhile, as they meet with trainers and study game plans, their boss waits for them outside. Alan Pace is Burnley F.C.’s compact, gray-bearded chairman and the lead investor at ALK Capital, a group that became

majority owner of Burnley Football Club in 2020. He shakes hands with the players, this American who once helped build Real Salt Lake into something respectable. Now he’s here, millions invested, twice a casualty of the ruthless, multimillion-dollar culling known in European soccer as “relegation,” which demotes the worst-performing teams to lower, much less lucrative divisions. That’s how Burnley ended up in the Championship league rather than its rightful place (its fans argue) in the Premier League. But today is not a day to dwell on the past.

Already the Clarets, as Burnley is known, have secured promotion back to the Premier League. Yet today, May 3, 2025, they still have a title to play for. A league to win. Today could spell the beginnings of validation for Pace and his co-owners’ belief that provincial Burnley can be competitive in the world’s most respected soccer league, jousting against behemoths backed by billionaires and sovereign wealth funds, all without sacrificing its soul. The idea, in

other words, of sports as ideal, rather than as business alone. Although, as Pace will tell you, it is still a business. And to live up to its ideals, it needs to run like one.

That attitude hasn’t always made him friends in Burnley. When some earlier decisions backfired, supporters threatened his life, right to his face. But today, when his name is announced alongside the players’ as they trot onto the pitch to face Millwall in the crammed finale of the 2024-25 season, the crowd roars. Pace smiles, savoring this suspended moment of possibility.

Tomorrow, he knows these same fans could sound very different. He knows they could turn when the realities of competing in the Premier League demand a different level of faith. But today — today they believe.

RUSSELL BALL HAS believed during the worst of times. In August 2024, after the team had been relegated and forced to sell off many of its best players, Ball, the team’s director of fan experience, posted on X urging Burnley fans to “have some

AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN ALAN PACE HAS STEERED THE U.K. FOOTBALL CLUB BURNLEY F.C. SINCE 2020.

PHOTOS

faith.” He tagged Pace and defended his leadership, imploring viewers to “calm down” and “let the process take its course.” His post was viewed over 163,000 times, with 180 replies, most of them negative, many of them nasty. He’s hardly posted since. But lately, he’s noticed some folks looking back at his remark with new, vindicating eyes. “It’s about the longevity of your promises and making sure they come true,” he tells me, leaning on a Formica desk in colorful running shoes, a polo shirt tucked into blue jeans. He often contemplates that sacred covenant between town and team that transcends the cold arithmetic of business ledgers.

That history echoes through today’s club leadership. Fellow ALK investor and co-owner Stuart Hunt, a BYU grad and former resident of Park City who moved to Burnley full time in 2023, got to know Pace when they were both bishops at neighboring wards in Connecticut. Board member Dave Checketts, who previously helmed Madison Square Garden and Real Salt Lake, is also a Latter-day Saint, as is Lola Ogunbote, a Nigerian who directs Burnley’s women’s program. These connections never manifest in matchday rituals, but they do create an invisible connective tissue that stakeholders believe makes Burnley unique. And they want to share that with the world.

The club sprouted from a mill town where textile barons cast long shadows over rows of “two up, two downs” — modest 800-square-foot homes that somehow accommodated mill workers and their sprawling families. These laborers found salvation in the beautiful game, first competing against fellow workers before challenging neighboring mills. Their fiercest foe emerged from nearby Blackburn, birthing a rivalry that Ball notes is “bred into generations” to this day.

When these players gathered momentum, they lobbied to professionalize their passion. The club, founded in 1882, stands among the dozen original members of the world’s first organized professional soccer league. Burnley F.C. has called Turf Moor home since 1883, an unbroken lineage that explains why Ball insists the football club remains “absolutely intrinsic in a community like this.”

Ball himself isn’t Burnley born-and-bred. His journey to the club came through Pace, a church connection — they’re both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — that represents one thread in a tapestry of faith throughout the organization. The region’s Latter-day Saint lineage stretches to the late 1830s when American missionaries baptized several thousand converts, some eventually trekking to Utah. Many modern Utahns, as a result, can trace their roots to this corner of England. RECENT WINS

The club’s global aspirations produced “Mission to Burnley,” a documentary series on Peacock that acknowledges the owners’ church affiliations from the get-go. It may lack the celebrity wattage of “Welcome to Wrexham,” an FX docuseries starring Ryan Reynolds and Rob “Mac” McElhenney that similarly follows their journey to revitalize a small-town English soccer team, or the mainstream appeal of the Apple TV smash-hit “Ted Lasso,” starring Jason Sudeikis as an American football coach who invigorates a fictional English soccer club, with mantras about belief. But the doc showcases Burnley’s unique character — in terms of history, faith and football. That formula tends to be a winner in the U.S., but at Turf Moor, calibrating Burnley’s local appeal with the interests of the wider world remains a work in progress.

Team leaders once debated relocating TV cameras that faced the stadium’s less impressive stand, Ball explains, only to discover broadcasters treasured those shots featuring bygone mill smokestacks in the background. Meanwhile, partnerships with “Visit Detroit,” whose leaders see a certain kinship in formerly industrial Burnley, as well as NFL star-turned-minority owner J.J. Watt and his wife, Utah native and former professional soccer player Kealia Watt, have injected American influence that some traditionalists grumble about — until the results quiet their protests. For now.

LOLA OGUNBOTE DIRECTS BURNLEY’S WOMEN’S PROGRAM.

ALAN PACE LIVES just minutes away from Turf Moor. That was always important to him when pursuing a Premier League club. He wanted to build something, and to build properly, he believes you have to be present. Especially when he knew almost nothing about Burnley when he became chairman, even though in some ways, his connection to the area predates his birth.

Pace’s father served a Latter-day Saint mission in northwest England in the early 1960s. Pace himself served a mission in Venezuela, which led him to graduate school in Barcelona in the early 1990s. There, he played semi-professional American football, becoming a return specialist despite his modest stature. “I’m one of those people,” he explains, “who loves to dream.” When they weren’t playing, he and his teammates supported the biggest team in town: F.C. Barcelona, the behemoth of global soccer that has been home to all-time greats like Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho and Neymar. Pace’s very first professional soccer match was watching Barça take on archrival and fellow behemoth Real Madrid in El Clásico. After something like that, he says, it’s pretty hard to say you’re not a fan.

When he finished his studies, Pace moved to London on his father’s advice. He spent a decade there becoming a Chelsea F.C. fan before relocating to New York to work with the financial services firm Lehman Brothers. His trajectory changed when Checketts — a sports business veteran who had also led the Utah Jazz and New York Knicks — hired him in 2006 as interim CEO of Major League Soccer’s struggling Real Salt Lake. “You cannot underestimate this guy. He has an iron will,” Checketts says of Pace. “He doesn’t always come across that way because he speaks soft and almost like he doesn’t care, but he cares deeply.”

Within two years, Pace led Real Salt Lake to an MLS Cup before returning to banking in New York. But the dream of team ownership had taken root. After a failed attempt to purchase Sheffield United, Pace and his partners kept searching until Christmas Eve

2019, when he secured a verbal agreement to buy Burnley. The deal was finalized in 2020, and Pace began implementing what he calls the “Burnley Way.”

This philosophy, though difficult to precisely define, centers on community and family. “That doesn’t mean that you can’t go somewhere else and get better skills, better pay or feel more loved,” Pace clarifies. “But doing that all together is the Burnley Way, where you feel something special about being here.”

That might sound like tired sports rhetoric, but those around the club cite concrete examples: Pace volunteering to babysit players’ kids or feed their dogs, or showing up unannounced at general manager Matt Williams’ home after his wife gave birth. Williams has also seen Pace and his co-owners applying American business principles to the club, with improved efficiency and data-driven goals. “Sometimes they have weird and wonderful ideas that we have to tell them, ‘We can’t do that. It’s not the Super Bowl,” Williams notes. But their attention to detail

THE CLUB, FOUNDED IN 1882, STANDS AMONG THE DOZEN ORIGINAL MEMBERS OF THE WORLD’S FIRST ORGANIZED PROFESSIONAL SOCCER LEAGUE.

BURNLEY PLAYERS CELEBRATE A SCORE AGAINST MILLWALL F.C. AT TURF MOOR, MAY 3, 2025.

THE BURNLEY WAY MAKES YOU “FEEL SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT BEING HERE.”

and ambition to prove that a small-market team can compete with Premier League giants is contagious.

“What I believe is that we can have an impact in the world’s largest sport, in the world’s best league,” Pace says, “and show that it can be communal, investable and successful.” Indeed, he believes in many things. Some of which have led to unparalleled success — and some that have unleashed death threats and failure.

BACK AT TURF MOOR,

the visitors from Millwall quiet the hometown fans with a goal 11 minutes in. To win the Championship league, Burnley needs to beat Millwall and have Leeds United lose or tie with lowly Plymouth Argyle. With so much needing to go right, an early deficit unleashes a sustained silence — except for the section packed with Millwall faithful, who scream and wave their arms like a pot of boiling spaghetti. Those fans are surrounded by security guards, as is custom. Fans here take these games seriously. Sometimes too much so, Pace has learned.

When he arrived, Burnley was in the middle of an unprecedented run: Five straight seasons in the Premier League. Fifteen months in, Pace decided change was needed regardless. He fired longtime head coach Sean Dyche — a man so beloved in Burnley that a local pub, bearing his likeness in regal dress, is called “The Royal Dyche.” It was a controversial move, especially with just eight games remaining in the season. The outcome came down to the final match of the year. Burnley lost, at home, and was relegated just 17 months into Pace’s leadership.

Pace had heard stories about passions spilling over into harassment and worse. He’d read about the Manchester United executive whose home had been targeted by the flares of enraged fans just down the road. Similarly, a deranged fan recently put the CEO of Everton in a headlock. But Pace didn’t expect to experience it so directly, so viscerally, as he did one afternoon in May 2022.

Pace’s seats at Turf Moor are not secluded. He sits among the fans. After the loss that condemned the Clarets to relegation, at least four of those fans approached. Alongside curse words, they told him to “go back where you came from.” To “go die.” Security had to intervene to escort Pace out.

In the weeks that followed, fans would walk by and spew similar bile. “It’s very easy, even now looking back, to minimize that,” he says. “It wasn’t hollow threats.” They were credible enough, at least, for team security and local police to recommend he disappear for a while. For his family to need personal bodyguards. For him to wonder whether he could safely visit the grocery store. He doubted the need for these precautions. “But all these people around me,” he adds, “said, ‘We don’t have a choice to find out whether you’re wrong.’”

To get the team back on track, Pace made a splashy hire in June 2022 to replace Dyche: Vincent Kompany, a young Belgian who’d starred at global superpower Manchester City. Kompany had limited managerial experience, but later on, Pace would liken him to a “Nobel laureate professor” who “may not give a ton of office hours. But when you sit in a lecture, you go, ‘Oh my goodness, where could I have ever heard from someone that amazing?’” It didn’t go well for Kompany at first. Five games into his first campaign, Burnley had only won once, and sat in 16th place. But the team wouldn’t lose again for 13 games, powering into first and never giving it up. At one point, the Clarets captured 10 wins in a row and lost only once in their final 26 matches. Burnley won the Championship League and earned promotion, while Pace unleashed a notorious quip about Kompany. “It’s like dating the most beautiful girl in town,” he said, “and knowing there’s zero chance she’ll marry you.”

He meant that Kompany was too good to last at small-time Burnley, which turned out to be true in part. Kompany’s second-year squad labored in the Premier League, with his fast-paced, attacking style of play rendered ineffective against the world’s best

players. At season’s end, Burnley was relegated once again, and Kompany was gone; Bayern Munich, the biggest team in Germany and one of the biggest in the world, hired him away for a massive £10.2 million (the equivalent of nearly $13 million at the time). Despite his struggles, Kompany left behind an impressive void. “It was a bit of a culture shock,” says Matt Scrafton, who covers the Clarets for the Burnley Express newspaper. “They were left to pick up the pieces.”

In addition to dreaming, Alan Pace prides himself on learning from mistakes. What went wrong in the past, he likes to ask, and how can I prevent it from happening again? Kompany had been terrific in many ways, but his style wasn’t, ultimately, a good fit to make up for the club’s small-market limitations.

Now, following Millwall’s game-opening goal, Kompany’s replacement looks on from the sideline. Arms crossed, oxfords planted in the turf, he hardly moves. He’s ready to strike back.

SCOTT PARKER BROUGHT his own impressive credentials to Burnley when Pace brought him on board in July 2024. He had played for some of the Premier League’s top clubs, including Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. And though only 43, he’d already guided two other clubs to Premier League promotion. Yet stylistically, he was no Vincent Kompany. Kompany, bald and imposing at 6-foot-3, prized aggression and player recruitment. Parker, 5-foot-9 with a

clean-cut, Roger Federer look, is all about defense and development. If Kompany was a Nobel laureate professor, Parker is the lecturer hosting office hours, Pace says. Getting to know players and making them want to play for him. Against Millwall, the approach pays off quickly: Just two minutes after the visitors’ game-opening goal, Burnley responds to tie it up.

It hasn’t always been so easy.

Parker’s approach did get the defense right, quickly — but that made for some not-so-fun games. Most importantly, Burnley tied 1-1 at home against its old milltown rivals, Blackburn Rovers. A result some fans found unacceptable. “He’s come under a lot of criticism at times,” says Paul Kidd, a longtime Burnley fan who heads the fan advisory board.

Kidd’s been a season ticket holder since 1985-86. “Burnley fans, in general, are quite a passionate bunch,” he says. “It’s kind of a special, unique club, really.” When Alan Pace and his fellow Americans came in, Burnley diehards worried that the club as they knew it could be killed — or worse: “Americanized,” Kidd says. He was skeptical, too. But while the new owners have made some changes, drastic predictions haven’t come to pass. Not only has the team remained competitive, but Kidd says Pace hasn’t missed a single fan advisory board meeting. “I think (Alan Pace) recognizes what the town’s about,” Kidd says. “I do believe he does.”

The belief paid off as the season progressed. Burnley’s defense remained

spectacularly good. The Clarets allowed just 16 goals in 46 matches, which was the best mark in English league history; compiled 30 shutouts, or “clean sheets”; and, entering the match against Millwall, hadn’t lost in 32 straight Championship league contests. Not, in fact, since their last game against Millwall. The club clinched Premier League promotion with two games remaining, following a 2-1 triumph over Sheffield United — the very club Pace tried and failed to buy years ago. “You can’t argue with the fact that we’ve got over the line,” Kidd says, “and I think it was evidence of what (Parker’s) plan was: to get the defense right first and then build.”

Whatever questions fans had about Parker — and about Pace — had been quelled. “(Pace) got that one spot on,” Scrafton, the newspaper scribe, says of Parker’s hiring. “There’s no doubt that he’s been excellent.” But what happens next is still suspect with national debates roiling the British soccer world about the growing gap between the country’s top divisions. Even between the haves and have-nots of the Premier League. “You could potentially get everything right off the pitch,” Scrafton says, “and it still might not be enough.”

BACK AT BURNLEY’S game against Millwall, it’s 1-1 at the half. On the other side of the country, meanwhile, Plymouth Argyle FC — one of the worst teams in the Championship League — shockingly leads visiting Leeds United 1-0 at the break. If that score

THE ALAN PACE ERA HAS SEEN A RAPID SUCCESSION OF BURNLEY COACHES, FROM SEAN DYCHE (LEFT), VINCENT KOMPANY (CENTER) AND, MOST RECENTLY, SCOTT PARKER.

holds, or even if Leeds manages to tie it up, Burnley just needs to secure victory at Turf Moor to win the league title.

Leeds scores quickly to start the second half down in Plymouth, but Burnley scores, too. Leading 2-1, the Clarets just need for nothing to change. A tall order in the turbulent, entropy-riddled world of English soccer. But maybe, for just half an hour, it’s possible.

Creeping into the 73rd minute, with both results intact, an unrelenting entourage of security guards in highlighter-yellow coats emerges on every side of the turf. Graphics flash on the ribbon scoreboard surrounding the pitch: “Please do not enter the playing surface,” all caps. Fans can feel it now. A season of struggle culminating in just a few minutes of action, here and down south. The whole thing comes down to execution and luck, measurable in seconds.

It’s stressful for everyone, but especially for Pace and Hunt, the fellow ALK investor/owner. Hunt has seen — has felt — high-pressure moments during his days on Wall Street, but nothing quite like this.

“There’s no bigger stage than English football in the world,” he says. Which made his decision to leave investing behind an easy one. “It’s incredible. The lives you can touch. The lives you can change. The value you can add.”

For Hunt and Pace, this moment represents more than just sporting glory. It’s also validation of their investment strategy. Proof that a small-market club can increase in value through strategic decisions and improvements. Unlike billionaire-backed rivals, they’ve had to be cunning, even shrewd, operating with limited resources in a sport increasingly dominated by the bottomless resources of oligarchs and foreign royalty. This is still an investment, after all, and like any investment, it demands return. This is about proving an ideal, yes — but part of proving the ideal is proving financial viability. “I get to work with great people and motivate them to operate better and reach goals and be better people,” Hunt says, “and that really motivates me every day.”

ALAN PACE BELIEVES IN MANY THINGS. SOME OF WHICH HAVE LED TO UNPARALLELED SUCCESS — AND SOME THAT HAVE UNLEASHED DEATH THREATS AND FAILURE.

BURNLEY’S LUCAS PIRES OUTMANEUVERS MILLWALL F.C. AT TURF MOOR ON MAY 3, 2025, IN THE TEAM’S SEASON FINALE. THE CLARETS NEEDED SOME HELP TO CLAIM THE CHAMPIONSHIP LEAGUE TITLE THAT FATEFUL SATURDAY.

That’s what belief in the mission looks like to him. But others within the organization define it differently. Ogunbote, the Nigerian Latter-day Saint who manages Burnley’s women’s program, sees it more philosophically. “That’s probably one of the key fabrics in any industry,” she says: Belief in your team’s success. You buy jerseys and tickets and go to games based on your own belief in your team. And even as an insider, she adds, you have to believe in the people around you, and in yourself. “I think belief is essential, critical when you’re in the sporting industry,” she says, citing “Ted Lasso.” “If you believe you can, you will.”

Hence Pace’s belief that underdogs can compete at this level. It may sound strange to call him and fellow ALK investors underdogs, given that they’re all wealthy by any reasonable standard. But they still don’t have billions to throw at the world’s best players. They have to fight the good fight. And if they do, belief tells them they have a chance.

On this day, as fans boo more reminders to stay off the field at 82 minutes — and at 86 minutes and 88 minutes — Millwall supporters suddenly erupt. Not for their own team’s success, but because word has spread: Leeds United has scored in stoppage time down in Plymouth, clinching the Championship League title regardless of what happens here.

The Clarets add another goal in the 93rd minute to punctuate their win, though it matters little. On this day, amid a certain level of success, it’s a reminder that some things are outside any individual’s control. But in this industrial town dotted with dormant smokestacks, transformation has always required seeing what could be rather than what is.

ONCE MORE, a disembodied voice urges fans to remain seated. To stay off the pitch.

Once more, fans boo. But nobody moves. Whether toward the grass, or toward the exits. Despite the heated online promises, there is to be no pitch invasion today. Instead, as the players disappear into the locker room, the voice promises a different kind of surprise.

When the players return a few minutes later, it’s time to revel. They bring their families and wear banners reading, “We’re going up!” Parker, the first-year manager, takes a victory lap, toasting Burnley diehards with a green glass bottle. The celebration will continue with a parade three days from now, with temporary signs already advertising it all over town. But today is the real party. And what better way to cap it off, this improbable season that played out to Bedingfield’s “Unwritten,” than with a surprise appearance by the Grammy-nominated singer herself, emerging from the locker room near a graffiti-style mural encouraging Burnley fans to “Visit Detroit.”

She’d been waiting for the players when the game had finished, and now she serenaded the fans. Circling the edge of the pitch as she sings while the players jump and sing alongside her. Later, Ball told me only three people knew she was coming. They wanted it to be a true surprise. I asked Hunt whether it was hard to get her. “You can do anything,” he chuckled, “with money.” The irony, of course, is that looking ahead to the team’s Premier League slate, that’s exactly what it will not have. Not relative to Manchester United and Arsenal and Liverpool. But that doesn’t stop Hunt from believing. “I think the ceiling is extremely high here. There’s no reason in the world why Burnley Football Club could not or should not be a Champions League team,” he says. “Not saying that’s gonna happen in our lifetime, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be that.”

Pace is a bit more modest. His ultimate vision for Burnley is still in flux. “I love the progress that we’re making, and I love the journey that we’re on and the people that are with us,” he says. “And I think that the more people we can bring along on this journey, the more I will start to see glimpses of what that vision might come to.”

It’s already snapped more sharply into focus since then. In July, he led ALK Capital in purchasing Barcelona-based club Espanyol, which competes in Spain’s top division. Though based in a major city, Espanyol is a lot like Burnley in that it exists on the fringes of one of the world’s top leagues, and very much in the shadow of F.C. Barcelona. “I have a tremendous connection to the local area,” Pace says, referring to his youth in Spain, “but I cannot say the same for the club, and I will be very honest with the club and the supporters of the club.”

That kind of honesty, he believes, will be the first step in exporting the “Burnley Way” to somewhere new. Although it won’t be called the Burnley Way in Barcelona. “In two or three years after we’ve been there, people should be saying, ‘Oh, so this is the Espanyol Way,’” he says.

Back at Turf Moor, it isn’t lost on Pace that, when his name is announced alongside players and coaches, fans cheer once again. Today, they believe in what he’s doing. Today, they believe their team can reach new heights with less money. Tomorrow, that could change quickly, because like the song says, “the rest is still unwritten” — and there’s no guarantee it will be written well.

But for this one afternoon in May, a long way from the potential letdown lurking in the months ahead, Burnley’s fans believe in the possibilities. And for Alan Pace, for now, that is enough.

TWIN SISTERS NAYVEE (LEFT) AND BRYNKLEE BATEMAN, 9, BEFORE COMPETING IN THE JUNIOR GOAT SHOWMANSHIP AT THE 2025 UTAH COUNTY FAIR.

STARCHED SHIRTS AND COUNTY FAIRS OF CELEB RATING

BY LAUREN STEELE PHOTOGRAPHY BY TESS CROWLEY

TYLEE JOHNSON, 6, (CENTER)

CAME AWAY WITH GRAND CHAMPION

PEEWEE SHOWMAN AND RESERVE

GRAND CHAMPION

LIGHTWEIGHT

MARKET LAMB RIBBONS.

HUGGED AROUND A WET NOSE

THE ROPE HALTER SLIPPED OVER A PAIR FUZZY BLACK EARS,

FLICKING BACK AND forth between sounds and pesky flies. I tried my best to keep my hands steady. Cows, like most animals, I’m convinced, sense your fear. So do dads, and mine was watching closely from outside the gate. I wanted to impress him. At 11 years old, this was my first time haltering a heifer by myself, and she was officially “my heifer,” even though I felt about as in command over her as I did my shaking hands.

My dad had let me pick her out from the herd in October at the end of grazing season, before the rest of the 7-month-olds were weaned, loaded up and sent to sales and finishing lots. I’d scanned the leggy, goofy calves — some bald-faced and skittish, some butterscotch-colored from their mixed Limousin-breed background — before he pointed right at her. She came from a good Black Angus cow and a registered Black Angus bull, he told me, introducing me to the idea of cattle pedigree. She’d probably grow to be a good cow, too. I followed his lead. The most thought I’d given to a calf before that was 1) they were cute, and

2) I couldn’t get too attached, because they got sold every fall for meat production — simple as that. Now it was time to start my more formal education.

I’d joined a local 4-H club because I had a lot to learn about the family business: farming. I also wanted to have an excuse to hang out with my sixth grade crush, who happened to show cattle every year at the county fair 4-H competitions.

When I asked my parents if I could join 4-H, I think something inside of them lit up. It was an opportunity for values they taught me — like hard work, honesty, neighborly love, community service and the importance of showing up — to come from other adults I could look up to, outside the dinner table or Sunday school. I think something inside of them also fretted. There was already dance practice, basketball, music club, travel softball, horses and dogs and chores — was there really time to feed and primp and train a cow to walk around an arena on a hot July day in hopes of what … that I’d win a ribbon?

They told me this heifer was my responsibility. And if I wanted to show her at the fair, then I had to do the work. I agreed.

Around six million young people are involved in the 4-H Youth Development Program in the United States, making it one of the nation’s largest youth organizations. Programs range from STEM to agriculture. It’s volunteer-led, and youth can join clubs for welding, gardening or — in my case — livestock. These clubs meet year-round, with the calendar culminating in one big moment: the county fair. It was there that you could show up and show off what you’d been working on for months.

For generations, “showing” at the fair has served as a means to come together as a community and celebrate. To dress up in starched jeans and pressed shirts and bring a piece of family-run farms into town. To hold tight that ineffable piece of rural

Americana and its memory, whether it actually ever existed or not. If it did, I swear it smelled like sawdust and funnel cakes.

THESE DAYS, THERE are only around 1,600 officially named “county fairs” held annually in the U.S. For comparison, there are about 3,000 counties in the country.

Rooted in agricultural history, youth education and cultural celebration, the county fair’s ability to evolve isn’t as powerful as its capacity to preserve tradition, which is part of what keeps it relevant and beloved across the country today. In Utah, an estimated 45,000 attended the Utah County Fair this year — nearly double the average population of towns considered “rural” in America, which around 20 percent of the nation’s population call home. In August, photographer Tess Cowley attended the four-day fair, documenting the most

modern version of old customs. And to be honest, it doesn’t look much different than how I remember it looking 20 years ago. Kids in collared shirts and ponytails, aluminum grandstands swept and shining, bugs swarming arena lights.

My first year of showing, between October and July, I washed and brushed my heifer every other week. I went to the feed store in the winter with my dad, half-dragging 50-pound bags of grain corn to the truck. I hoped and prayed that she’d grow big and strong, with straight pasterns on her legs and a wide chest, just like the diagrams for “winning conformation” showed. We practiced walking around the barn lot, turning circles for hours. On the day of the show, I polished her hooves and tried to walk with a straight back and confidence. Somehow, we came away with third place. My dad was right, she was a good cow.

COUNTY FAIR COMPETITIONS GO BEYOND LIVESTOCK. (CLOCKWISE) STEVEN MONEY AND HIS HANDMADE SADDLE, CATHY BLACK HOLDING JARS OF HER APPLE AND CONCORD JELLIES, LEON OLSEN WITH HIS WOODWORK AND ANN DAVIS DISPLAYING HER CERAMIC CREATION, ALL ENTERED THEIR HANDIWORK HOPING FOR TOP HONORS.

JASON DAVIS RACED HIS “007” CAR IN THE FAIR’S DEMOLITION DERBY. THE NUMBER PAYS HOMAGE TO HIS BROTHER JOSH, A JAMES BOND FAN, WHO WELDED THE VEHICLE TOGETHER.

MONEY SHOWS OFF HIS BELT BUCKLE ADVERTISING THE FAIR’S WESTERN NIGHT RODEO, WHERE COWBOYS COMPETE IN BAREBACK BRONC RIDING (RIGHT) AND OTHER EVENTS.

TAYGAN JOHNSON, 17, PRACTICING SETTING UP HER SHEEP AHEAD OF THE UTAH COUNTY FAIR, WHERE SHE WON GRAND CHAMPION SENIOR SHOWMAN AND FOURTH OVERALL HEAVYWEIGHT LAMB COMPETITIONS.

LIKE AT THOUSANDS OF LOCAL FAIRS ACROSS THE COUNTRY, FOOD AND GAMES ARE A TEMPTING DISTRACTION FOR FAIRGOERS MAKING THEIR WAY TO OTHER EVENTS.

RICHARD ANDERSON ENTERED HIS WOODWORKING CREATION IN THE OPEN CLASS COMPETITION.

THE MYTH OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM

WE BELIEVE IN FREE EXPRESSION FOR ALL — EXCEPT FOR THOSE WE DESPISE

BY PATRICK J. DENEEN

SUDDENLY, IT SEEMS everyone in the academy today — left, right and center — is an advocate of academic freedom. Whether on the right, as an appeal against “cancellation,” or on the left, in response to the demonization of DEI, appeals to free expression are suddenly much in vogue.

Given that the invocation of academic freedom becomes fashionable only when academics feel that their views are under threat, we might conclude that such appeals are ultimately cynical. For conservatives, yesterday’s complaints against the silencing by “wokeness” appear increasingly replaced by calls for forced conversion of elite institutions to a certain worldview. For

institutions like Harvard — which only recently was amenable to “cancel culture” — academic freedom is suddenly viewed as a shield against the interferences of the federal government. Both actors seem, in fact, to be less interested in principled commitment to academic freedom than protecting or advancing their preferred perspectives.

Some will insist that the position of greatest intellectual probity would be an unswerving commitment to academic freedom, no matter the view being expressed. Such a position echoes the famous stance attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” However, not only do I think this stance is mistaken — for we do not and ought not to tolerate every perspective, such as those who defend the proposition that chattel slavery is a positive good — but I think it’s further untenable that any human institution can be organized on such a supposedly neutral and nonjudgmental basis. In the final estimation, it’s impossible to escape substantive commitments or obligations. Even the supposedly neutral and liberal commitment to free speech and academic freedom itself contains foundational sets of beliefs requiring preliminary agreement.

Today’s varying invocations of “academic freedom” merely obscure the true reality of the situation — one that informs not only all academic institutions, but all human communities: There is no such thing as a pure domain of “academic freedom” or “free speech” or “free expression.” As human beings, we always contest the boundaries of freedom within any of our human communities. We would have more honest and productive debates not by assuming supposedly principled neutral stances, but by being frank about the substantive nature of our actual commitments. This kind of

honesty is especially necessary at academic institutions today.

In defense of this more challenging but realistic condition, I will explore three propositions: First, there is no such thing as pure “academic freedom.” Second, those who claim it exists almost always seek to place the substantive premises of liberalism beyond the realm of debate. Third, there is a form of academic freedom, but that freedom is always bounded and contested. There is no easy fix to the complex reality of human institutions, which always erect boundaries around domains in which contestation is acceptable, and stances that are deemed out of bounds.

THEORIES OF FREE speech, and their near twin, academic freedom, are the fruit of efforts by early modern liberal thinkers such as John Milton, John Locke and John Stuart Mill to overturn an older tradition that, in their view, oppressed a great many forms of speech, expression and worship. Arguments for untrammeled free speech and toleration of a wide variety of viewpoints, even religious beliefs, became the founding hallmarks of liberal philosophy.

This foundational narrative has been dominant for several centuries at least, but has been powerfully challenged over that time, including one notable challenge more than 30 years ago in 1994, when the leftist scholar and public intellectual Stanley Fish published an essay titled “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing Too.” As a prominent scholar of John Milton, Fish was well aware of the ways that classical defenses of free speech characteristically acknowledged the outer limits of any regime of tolerance, and were often quite frank in acknowledging the exceptions to the rule of toleration — and hence, of supposedly free speech. In the case of Milton, Fish wrote, “Not far from the end of ‘Areopagitica,’ and after having celebrated the virtues of toleration and unregulated publication in passages that find their way into every discussion of free speech and the First Amendment, John Milton catches

himself up short and says, of course I didn’t mean Catholics — them we exterminate.”

In Milton’s words:

“I mean not tolerated popery and open superstition, which as it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate. … That also which is impious or evil against faith or manners, no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw itself.”

by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” which called for the suppression of speech and expression by conservatives — a text that became the playbook of campus progressives who run today’s campuses.

IN THE SERVICE OF TRUTH, WE SHOULD BE FRANK ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE VISION OF OUR SOCIETY AND THE POLITICAL ORDER THAT WE ARE ACTUALLY SEEKING TO DEFEND, CHALLENGE, ADVANCE — AND, YES, IN SOME CASES, TO DEFEAT.

A near-identical limitation is found in John Locke’s foundational work “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” in which the free exercise of religion is delimited not only by forbidding Catholicism, but atheism as well — in the latter case, because atheists cannot be trusted to be honest in the swearing of oaths. And John Stuart Mill set some significant limitations to free speech and expression, infamously arguing that “barbarians” who were still dominated by the “despotism of custom” should be placed for a time under despotism of their more progressive masters. Mill’s limitation was eventually adopted

Fish rightly notes that all defenses of free speech either explicitly or implicitly contain an internal limitation based on “acceptable tolerance levels.” As a philosophical matter, it is perfectly comprehensible to state that all speech and expression ought to be tolerated; but as an applied and practical matter, this “pure” position is simply never the case. Indeed, Fish astutely argues that we should view free speech not as a potentially limitless domain of expression that might require a few limits placed upon it — such as harm — but that the limiting features are themselves the defining condition of the effectual arena of free speech. How we will define “harm” will already contain substantive commitments, as we have seen in recent years in the way harm was defined, especially in the form of “microaggressions” and “safe spaces” in respect to identity.

A community always demarcates the exception to free expression not as a regrettable limit, but as the defining feature of the community itself — that which makes shared speech possible. Outside that limit, restrictions must be informally or authoritatively enforced in the name of defending the very purpose and existence of the community itself. As Fish notes, “When the pinch comes (and sooner or later it will always come) and the institution (be it church, or state, or university) is confronted by behavior subversive of its core rationale, it will respond by declaring ‘of course we mean not tolerated ____, that we extirpate __,’ not because an exception to a general freedom has suddenly and contradictorily been announced, but because the freedom has never been general and has always been understood against the backdrop of an originary exclusion that gives it meaning.”

The same is doubly or triply true of academic institutions, which in every instance

have been established on comparable bases of deep underlying commitments, and therefore, shared exclusions. As Fish writes, “Could it be the purpose of such places to encourage free expression? If the answer were ‘yes,’ it would be hard to say that there would be any need for classes, or examinations, or libraries, since freedom of expression requires nothing but a soapbox or an open telephone line. The very fact of the university’s machinery — of the events, rituals, and procedures that fill its calendar — argues for some other, more substantive purpose. In relation to that purpose (which will be realized differently in different kinds of institutions), the flourishing of free expression will in almost all circumstances be an obvious good; but in some circumstances, freedom of expression may pose a threat to that purpose, and at that point it may be necessary to discipline or regulate speech, lest to paraphrase (John) Milton, the institution sacrifice itself to one of its accidental features.” That is, academic freedom is “accidental” or secondary to the primary function of the institution in which such freedom occurs, and is defined and delimited, even if always provisionally and never fully explicit.

THIS BASIC FEATURE of “academic freedom” as resting on a foundation of exclusion has been known, if not always frankly acknowledged, for some time — at least as far back as the various critics of the three Johns: Milton, Locke and Mill. We can get a good idea of the intentions of the more contemporary architects of academic freedom by revisiting at least some of its history — the debates that once raged over the topic, and the claims that eventually carried the day and became institutionalized on college campuses through the American Association of University Professors and later internal governance and external accreditation agencies.

Unsurprisingly, the substantive and transformative commitments of liberal forms of “academic freedom” were once obvious, especially to the religious,

particularly Catholic conservatives such as in the mid-20th century. Among the more prescient of Catholic university and college leaders who became vociferous critics of the doctrine of academic freedom included the presidents of Georgetown, Fairfield University and the leadership of the National Jesuit Educational Association, which may surprise some, given the contemporary progressiveness of Jesuit institutions. These earlier figures suspected that demands for the governing principle of academic freedom, driven especially by academics and officials at elite secular universities, were part of a general effort to secularize educational institutions and,

he concluded that “truth itself, absolute truth, will put no limitations to teaching, to research or to publication — because there is no absolute truth (in the naturalist philosophy). Truth, like all else, is evolving. … An absolute norm of morality will put no restraint on conclusions, theoretical or practical, since there is no absolute standard of morality. The norm of morality is utilitarian and hedonistic. … Such, I think, will be the attitude toward academic freedom of a large majority of American educators. Their attitude and their interpretation of any statement on academic freedom is the outcome of their fundamental philosophy of life and education.” Rooney was under no illusion of the nature of the change being demanded not only of secular, but ultimately religious institutions.

NEARLY ALL OF TODAY’S COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES HAVE BECOME MONOLITHIC BASTIONS OF PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM THAT NO LONGER PRIZE ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN RESPECT TO CERTAIN ANTI-PROGRESSIVE VIEWPOINTS.

more broadly, American society. In 1941, Edward Rooney, S.J., who was the national secretary of the Jesuit Educational Association, wrote in response to the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, that the liberal form of academic freedom was anathema to the self-understanding of Catholic and Christian institutions of higher education. Rooney presciently argued that the liberal reformers sought to transform the institutional nature of educational institutions, secular and religious alike. Arguing that the only limitation allowed by “naturalistic educators” would be professional standards,

On this point, Rooney cited “The Humanist Manifesto” — published in 1933 — as evidence for the “dogma” that was ultimately sought by progressive educational reformers, including John Dewey, one of the signatories of the manifesto, and later one of the architects of the AAUP statement. The 13th “dogma” of the manifesto is noteworthy:

“Religious humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control and direction of such associations and institutions with a view to the enhancement of human life, is the purpose and program of humanism. Certainly, religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, ecclesiastical methods and communal activities, must be reconstructed as rapidly as experience will allow, in order to function effectively in the modern world.”

Evident to many observers — religious and secular alike — was that calls for academic freedom were equated by many of its proponents as a main means of lessening

and even eliminating religious and religiously informed moral dimensions in the universities. Among the most influential and prominent defenses of academic freedom was published by Robert MacIver, a professor at Columbia University and director of the “American Academic Freedom Project.” In his 1955 book, “Academic Freedom in Our Time,” he wrote that academic freedom required the elimination of religious influence within secular institutions, and made it clear that any institution that retained religious affiliation was engaging in self-marginalization from what should be prevailing academic norms:

“Those who advocate that the university should take a definitely religious stand are in their proselyting zeal committing themselves to the total perversion of the function of the university. They would revert to the intellectual confusion of earlier times, when a superimposed prior ‘truth’ retarded the advance of knowledge and thus tended to imprison the inquiring mind. To make the university the center for the propagation of any creed, of any system of values that divides group from group, is to destroy the special quality and the unique mission of the university as a center for the free pursuit of knowledge wherever it may lead.”

According to MacIver, the institutionalization of “academic freedom” as the dominant principle of academic inquiry required replacing established religious truths with an open search for new knowledge, “wherever it might lead.” Left unstated is what would become the status of those new “truths” at institutions founded under this new ethos. But the basic ethos of a liberal ideal of a “humanism” that aimed at the “fulfillment of human life” could be expected to become a new form of campus orthodoxy. In an echo to Mill’s defense of liberty in the name of overturning “the despotism

of custom” and liberating “experiments in living,” it turned out that a seemingly neutral principle of academic inquiry already contained within it a set of substantive commitments that we now see fully manifest in most educational institutions today. And, having discovered the new “knowledge” and even “truth” that supports a humanistic pursuit of the “fulfillment of human life” in largely material and hedonistic terms, that new “truth” itself becomes the limiting factor of further “academic freedom.”

FAST-FORWARDING 70 YEARS, we witness today a rising chorus of traditional and religious voices making vociferous arguments for the institutional protection of academic freedom. Particularly striking are current defenses of academic freedom that have been prominently articulated by one of America’s most visible, articulate and influential conservative Catholic thinkers, professor Robert George of Princeton University. In April 2020, he published a brief statement on academic freedom on the webpage of the conservative and ecumenical religious publication, First Things, that stated:

“At campuses across the country, traditional ideals of freedom of expression and the right to dissent have been deeply compromised or even abandoned as college and university faculties and administrators have capitulated to demands for language and even thought policing. Academic freedom, once understood to be vitally necessary to the truth-seeking mission of institutions of higher learning, has been pushed to the back of the bus.”

Clearly, much had changed in the conservative religious world over the course of 75 years. Institutions that were once “conservative” had become overwhelmingly liberal, even radically progressive, and now their denizens were shrinking the

range of “academic freedom” in the name of “academic justice” — attempting to rid the academy, and the wider world, of injustices of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, colonialism, toxic masculinity and so forth. People of a more traditional, often religious, view were increasingly denounced, silenced, canceled, fired and forced into the state of self-censorship. Having achieved the kind of progressive institution that academic freedom’s defenders had set out to achieve, they were now explicit about the strict limitations of “tolerance levels” — just as Milton, Locke and Mill predicted would happen when their articulations of “free speech” were publicized.

The irony is rich, but — as our brief encounter with traditionalist Catholic concerns about the consequences of academic freedom foretold — not unexpected. For there is more than coincidence linking the mid-20th century embrace of liberal forms of “academic freedom” and the fact that nearly all of today’s colleges and universities have become monolithic bastions of progressive liberalism that no longer prize academic freedom in respect to certain anti-progressive viewpoints. Nor should we be surprised that today’s would-be intellectual heirs of the midcentury Jesuits find themselves taking up liberal arguments for “academic freedom” and “viewpoint diversity.”

THIS IS NOT to say that there is no such thing as academic freedom — but rather, that all forms and expressions of that freedom are necessarily limited by the context in which that freedom is exercised. Today’s advocates for academic freedom such as Robert George are correct in arguing that universities should be institutions in which a variety of views are entertained. They should not be echo chambers. However, his argument neglects the actual ways that humans interact, satisfied to make claims (like so many others) on the plain of abstract philosophy. He states that students should feel free and welcome to make any argument that they wish in their classes, in their dormitories,

over a meal in the dining hall. The same should go for faculty. But any sensible student and every faculty member who cares not only about her employment contract, but her academic reputation and professional stature, knows that such a condition of “pure” openness never exists — nor should any of us want it to exist.

Universities are a unique kind of community. Its members are chosen: faculty, staff and administrators are all hired, and students are admitted. The community — the collegium — that is shaped by those selections is defined by the substantive commitments that constitute the bounded arena in which academic freedom is engaged. Whether we acknowledge this fact or not, we don’t permit every individual and every viewpoint into these communities. In the case of some Christian religious institutions, efforts to select faculty, administration and staff based upon a reading and discussion of faith statements aspire to shape a community of inquiry in light of the shared truths of the Bible and Christian faith. More broadly, what we as a civilization have come to regard as abhorrent claims — such as defenses of chattel slavery or arguments for the inherent inferiority of certain races or religious believers — are largely weeded out through the long process of undergraduate education, admission to graduate school, scholarly training, the heavily patrolled processes of hiring, tenuring, promotion and academic recognition.

Lines are always being drawn, but for the most part they are not entirely visible and they are ever-shifting. Still, every community has its lines, whether implicit or explicit. In the end, the actual practice of academic freedom will always be secondary to the question of what kind of community, what sort of collegium — and, by extension, what kind of society and what kind of nation — we should believe we inhabit or that we seek to realize. This fact is revealed once you scratch the surface of even the most passionate free-speech absolutist (for instance, many of yesterday’s free-speech

absolutists are today seeking to eliminate DEI programs and ban what are determined to be antisemitic protests and practices, and even activists, from campuses).

There is no “safe space” from the need to draw lines, only the freedom that is generally permitted within the expanse of acceptable views that define the collegium, and the peril that awaits the person or people or even institutions that would challenge that view. They may succeed, or they may fail, but there is no guarantee of indifference or theoretically limitless toleration. This gray area of where perilous words and ideas reside is ultimately what we call “politics,” and there is simply

IT IS PERFECTLY COMPREHENSIBLE TO STATE THAT ALL SPEECH AND EXPRESSION OUGHT TO BE TOLERATED; BUT AS AN APPLIED AND PRACTICAL MATTER, THIS “PURE” POSITION IS SIMPLY NEVER THE CASE.

no escaping that the contestation of politics is and will forever be a part of every collegium, including universities and the larger nations in which they exist. Here again, Stanley Fish is on point: “The good news is that precisely because speech is never ‘free’ in the two senses required — free of consequences and free from state pressure — speech always matters, it is always doing work. … Because everything we say impinges on the world in ways indistinguishable from the effects of physical action, we must take responsibility for our verbal performances — all of them — and not assume they are being taken care of by a clause in the Constitution. Of course, with responsibility comes risks, but they have always been our risks, and

no doctrine of free speech has ever insulated us from them.”

I conclude then by suggesting that there is no such thing as “academic freedom” in the way that it is usually meant — “academic freedom” in its pure form is a myth. We are currently living through a period in which the underlying assumptions that have governed liberal institutions are undergoing profound reevaluation, which inevitably involves and implicates politics — narrowly in the academic sense, and more broadly, as a matter of national debate. But, while this contestation today is quite visible, it is never inescapable, and the appeal to pure “academic freedom” is always an effort to smuggle in one’s own commitments behind a veil of neutrality.

Today, it is the leaders and faculty of progressive liberal institutions that are (once again) invoking “academic freedom” as a shield against a now-aggressive government seeking to reorder their internal culture in accordance with a substantive set of commitments. We should recognize that what an institution like Harvard is defending is a particular kind of collegium — one that offered little academic freedom within its walls in recent years — and that the invocation of “academic freedom” on all sides is an increasingly flimsy shroud that masks substantive, and substantively different, worldviews.

In the service of truth, we should be frank about the nature of the vision of our collegium, our society and the political order that we are actually seeking to defend, challenge, advance — and, yes, in some cases, to defeat. The truest form of freedom would begin with a frank acknowledgement of the exclusions that define the domain in which freedom is lived, focusing on the substance and limits of what our community deems acceptable, rather than retreating behind a veil of false neutrality. That examination is never without its potential perils and costs, but as the old saying goes, “freedom is never free.”

PATRICK J. DENEEN IS A PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME.

THE AGE OF RE-ENCHANTMENT

HOW REDISCOVERY OF THE DIVINE ECLIPSED ATHEISM IN FINDING MEANING FOR MODERN LIFE

TBY ZACHARY DAVIS

THINGS HAVE GONE terribly wrong with our civilization. Social trust is plummeting, loneliness is epidemic, AI slop proliferates and microplastics invade our blood, brains and even breastmilk. But the most disheartening statistic in my mind is this: 40 percent of high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year, and 20 percent have seriously considered ending their lives. Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for teens and young adults. Our children increasingly don’t want to live in the world we have made for them. With problems this serious, we need more than policy nudges and algorithm

tweaks. We need a civilizational course correction. But first, we must understand what is making us sick.

Twenty years ago, a group of thinkers converged on an answer: religion. In a series of bestselling books, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens — widely nicknamed the “Four Horsemen of the New Atheism” — argued that religion was an infantile indulgence, an irrational scourge and a perennial obstacle to peace and happiness. For Dennett, “I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections.” Dawkins claimed that religion was a “delusion,” a “mental illness” and “a force for evil in the world.” Hitchens asserted that “faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.” Harris pleaded: “Religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.”

The new atheists were nothing if not strident. And for about two decades, millions listened. In the early 2000s, about 42 percent of Americans attended church regularly. By 2024, that had dropped to 30 percent. In 2000, about 8 percent identified as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” By 2022, the share of “nones” had nearly quadrupled to 31 percent.

But curiously, America seems to have turned back from the path toward Europeanstyle secularization — Americans are giving religion another look. The decline in religiosity has slowed and, in some places, reversed. Many “nones” have turned back into “somes.”

The reasons for this mini-revival are no doubt complex, but one of them, I’d wager, is that the promises of the New Atheists

proved empty. Declining faith didn’t lead to less division, less ignorance and more reasoned moral discourse. On the contrary, as Justin Brierley writes in “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God”: “The secular utopia never arrived. Instead of reason triumphing, we got the rise of conspiracy theories, political extremism and deep tribal divisions.”

In this new moment of spiritual openness, four recently published books — “All Things Are Full of Gods” by David Bentley Hart, “Believe” by Ross Douthat, “Living in Wonder” by Rod Dreher and “Against the Machine” by Paul Kingsnorth — offer a very different diagnosis for our civilization’s ills. Although they vary widely in tone and emphasis, these books share a core belief: Our crisis is spiritual, rooted in an aggressive, reductive materialism that looks upon the wonder of creation and sees only lifeless matter to analyze, control and exploit. They also converge on a shared hope: that amid the ruins of Christendom, genuine religious life can be reborn in the West. Taken together, these books represent the definitive death of the New Atheism and the emergence of a new set of intellectual equestrians. OK, I’ll say it. “The Four Horsemen of New Theism.”

CONSCIOUSNESS IS STRANGE. I’m sitting on a tree-shaded patio of a coffee shop, feeling a gentle breeze, listening to William Byrd’s “Mass for Four Voices” and remembering the time my wife and I drove a Vespa across the south of France. How are all these thoughts and memories happening? And where are they happening? In the brain, you might respond. Well sure, but where exactly? In the hippocampus or amygdala? In the cerebral cortex or parietal lobes? Or is consciousness found deeper down, in the synapses, atoms or molecules? Scientists just don’t know. It’s what philosopher David Chalmers famously called “the hard problem of consciousness” — how can physical processes give rise to subjective experience? Recently, many scientists have started

embracing the theory of “emergence” — which posits that even though no individual neuron is conscious in itself, when the brain’s billions of individual neurons interact dynamically with each other, they give rise to subjective awareness, intentionality and memory. For the theologian David Bentley Hart, this idea is poppycock. “Emergence,” he argues, is just another way of saying “magic.” Consciousness will never be accurately explained by scientists because they are blinded by their unshakeable faith in materialism.

In his dazzling philosophical dialogue “All Things Are Full of Gods,” Hart takes aim at the foundational assumptions of

A CURIOUS THING SEEMS TO HAVE HAPPENED ON AMERICA’S PATH TOWARD EUROPEAN-STYLE SECULARIZATION — PEOPLE SEEM TO BE GIVING RELIGION ANOTHER LOOK.

materialism, the worldview that everything that exists is ultimately reducible to matter in motion. In his view, this “mechanistic philosophy” is a metaphysical myth masquerading as a scientific certainty.

His book is structured as six days of debate between the Greek gods Psyche, Hermes, Hephaestus and Eros, who each present different sides of the debate over whether mind or matter is the fundamental structure of reality. In the premodern past, and in most non-Western cultures, reality is understood to be saturated with spirit, pregnant with meaning and full of inherent purpose and fullness. As Psyche explains, “For most of their history,

(humans) naturally viewed all of cosmic nature as the residence of mysterious and vital intelligences — gods and nymphs, daemons and elves, phantoms and goblins, and every other kind of nature spirit or preternatural agency.”

But a series of theological and philosophical developments in Europe began a process that has narrowed our vision and diminished our perceptions of the sacred. The scientific method that emerged in the 16th century was originally meant to be just that — a method, a tool for answering certain questions. But as the Scientific Revolution progressed, thinkers like Descartes, Newton and Hobbes began to describe the universe as a vast machine governed by mathematical laws. And though often still religious themselves, philosophers no longer felt they could defend the claims of theism because they couldn’t test them empirically. Religion shrank to the domain of private sentiment, and science became the only arbiter of truth. Calculation, not contemplation, became the highest mode of thought; only the measurable was meaningful.

This banishment of spiritual realities from our culture and our picture of a dead world full of mere matter to manipulate has left us lonely, in despair and adrift. But our hearts still long for deeper communion with a living world, and we are increasingly looking for it in strange places.

As Hart writes: “The history of modern disenchantment is the history of humankind’s long, ever deepening self-exile. So, naturally, no longer believing that the world hears or speaks to them, they find themselves looking elsewhere for those presences. They call out to the stars and scan the skies with enormous radio telescopes, searching for the faintest whisper of a response. They convince themselves that their machines might become sentient. They dream of creating a virtual reality responsive to their needs in a way that the now spiritually evacuated world around them no longer seems to be.”

The world and human beings are not

machines, argues Hart, but emanations of a divine mind. Consciousness is not an accident of random selection, but a reflection of the source of all creation and possibility — in other words, God. The foundation of all reality is spiritual.

Hart’s book helps us see and experience the wonder in language, in the variety of physical forms and the mysterious fact that we can perceive it all with the depth and richness that we do. “The reality the modern world chooses to impose is a ‘rationality’ of the narrowest kind, obsessed with what things are and how they might be used rather than struck with wonder by the inexplicable truth that things are.”

LIKE HART, NEW York Times columnist Ross Douthat has made a career of puncturing the barely-considered secular assumptions of his educated liberal readership. But “Believe” is not an anti-atheist polemic — it’s a sincere invitation for the God-curious, a population of people that has grown in recent years as the fruits of strident secularism have turned increasingly sour. Like the French philosopher Blaise Pascal 350 years ago, Douthat wants to persuade religious fence-sitters to be bolder and bet on belief.

He begins his apologia by pointing out that many agnostics harbor a vague notion that science has disproved much of the foundations of theism, in particular the idea of a creator god who made a world especially for us. Douthat contends that the opposite is true. “We have much better evidence for the proposition that the universe was made with human beings in mind … than ancient or medieval peoples ever did.” Central to this claim is the array of physical laws and constants that suggest some kind of cosmic “fine-tuning” designed to enable creatures like us to be viable. Skeptics counter with the multiverse theory, postulating the existence of infinite other universes, with our life-friendly one just a lucky accident. But Douthat rightly points out that such theories require perhaps even more faith than theism. “Just as Darwinian theory did not

actually resolve the metaphysical questions raised by the universe’s beautifully ordered existence, these moves do not sweep away the persistent fingerprints of God.”

Then there’s the unexpected persistence of the spooky stuff. David Hume and other Enlightenment skeptics expected miracles, encounters with supernatural beings and all manner of mystical experiences to decline as the proportion of believers in society waned. Yet even as the number of “nones” has dramatically risen, people continue to experience and report encounters with the unexplainable — from visitations, to near-death experiences, to miraculous cures for the incurable. Such experiences

“THE SECULAR UTOPIA NEVER ARRIVED. INSTEAD OF REASON TRIUMPHING, WE GOT THE RISE OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES, POLITICAL EXTREMISM AND DEEP TRIBAL DIVISIONS.”

are chinks in the armor of what he calls “Official Knowledge” — the narrow range of empirically testable modern beliefs. Douthat encourages this more capacious picture of reality: “There are more things in heaven and earth than can be measured and distilled by scientific materialism.”

And if you are one of these newly God-curious seekers willing to give belief a chance, what religion should you join? Douthat suggests that any spiritual path is better than none, but the smart choice is to go big and go old. The tried and tested religions of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are more likely to

be true and good for you than your own bespoke path. “Putting together a religious worldview entirely on your own, simply taking a bit here from one faith or a bit there from another, presumes a lot upon the strength of your individual intellect and moral compass, to say nothing of more supernatural questions.”

DOUTHAT’S REASON-BASED ARGUMENTS for God will open the door to faith for some. But for the Orthodox convert Rod Dreher, Western Christianity suffers from the broader culture’s hyper-rationality and needs to learn from the Eastern Church how to cultivate a more heart-centered spiritual life. This is the aim of his book “Living In Wonder.” “I am convinced that the only way to revive the Christian faith,” writes Dreher, “which is fading fast from the modern world, is not through moral exhortation, legalistic browbeating, or more effective apologetics but through mystery and the encounter with wonder.”

Disenchantment is the name the German sociologist Max Weber gave to the ascendance of the mechanistic, materialist worldview. For Dreher, wonder is the essential tool of re-enchantment because it is “a rigorous discipline of attention. It’s the act of consenting to beauty in a world that has learned to ignore it.” Prayer and beauty are the two primary means of re-enchanting our lives and experiencing the sacramental nature of reality, the perception that “all created things bear divine power and participate in the life of God.” Prayer is vital because it helps us cultivate attention and a living faith requires perception, not conception. Beauty, whether a mountain valley or the illuminated windows of Chartres, are a revelation of God, who is beauty’s ultimate source. Prayer, beauty and liturgy help us not just know about God, but know God.

Dreher’s emphasis on attention draws heavily from the work of neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, whose pioneering research on brain hemispheres argues that in Western cultures “science, mathematics,

and empirical reasoning (left brain) have crowded out poetry, art, and religion (right brain) as ways of knowing.” Becoming so left-brained has blinded us to the true and wilder nature of reality. “The world is not what we think it is,” writes Dreher. “It is so much weirder. It is so much darker. It is so, so much brighter and more beautiful. We do not create meaning; meaning is already there, waiting to be discovered.”

What “true enchantment” really is, “is simply living within the confident belief that there is deep meaning to life, meaning that exists in the world independent of ourselves. It is living with faith to know that meaning and commune with it.” To that end, it is vital for us to learn “how to perceive the presence of the divine in daily life and to create habits that open our eyes and our hearts to him.”

But to see God requires repentance. In Dreher’s words, “If we want to live, we have to turn our lives around and walk away from the false parts of the Enlightenment and toward the true Light.” Such a total revolution is not primarily intellectual but affective and bodily: “We cannot think our way back to enchantment or unity with God. We can find it only by participating in his life.”

PERHAPS NO SINGLE event was more significant in signaling a cultural shift toward religion than the 2021 publication of Paul Kingsnorth’s story of his conversion to Christianity in First Things. A former eco-activism leader, Kingsnorth tried atheism, Buddhism and even Wicca before a series of mystical experiences led him to embrace Christianity. In the years since that essay, Kingsnorth has quickly become, in my view, the most important intellectual convert to Christianity since C.S. Lewis.

“Against the Machine” is a searing indictment of our technological civilization and a manifesto for spiritual resistance. “The Machine” is the name Kingsnorth gives to modernity’s relentless pursuit of control, technological advancement and materialism. Like Hart, Douthat and Dreher, Kingsnorth identifies the root of the

problem as a scientific and Enlightenment worldview run amok. But where those authors seek in their writing to save a moribund, but nonetheless revivable Western civilization, he is much more pessimistic. The West, Kingsnorth believes, already died long ago, and we are merely living in its ruins. Cause of death? The abandonment of Christ and our worship of false gods — consumerism, progress, nationalism and ultimately ourselves.

What does “The Machine” want? Total control and predictability. The conquering of space and time. Liberation from every constraint. Anything standing in the way of that goal can be discarded. The

Love. God. Place. Culture. The profound mystery of beauty. A sense of being rooted. A feeling for land or community or cultural traditions or the unfolding of human history over generations. Song. Art.”

Politics can’t save us. For Kingsnorth, liberals and conservatives may appear different on the surface but they both affirm the logic of endless growth, technological control and consumerism. Nor will nostalgia. A return to a supposedly more pristine past is a paralyzing fantasy. Our only hope is to rebuild genuine culture — to commit to particular places with particular people, to embrace prayer and a sacramental way of life that prioritizes surrender, humility, and a transcendent order. Walk away from "The Machine” and pick up the cross. “The ultimate goal of all traditional religion,” he writes, “is to understand the world as sacred again, and to remake our souls in its light.”

OUR CRISIS IS SPIRITUAL, ROOTED IN AN AGGRESSIVE, REDUCTIVE MATERIALISM THAT LOOKS UPON THE WONDER OF CREATION AND SEES ONLY LIFELESS MATTER TO ANALYZE, CONTROL AND EXPLOIT.

500-year culmination of “The Machine” is AI, which seeks to transcend the final limitation: humanity. “We are headed very quickly now, and increasingly openly,” Kingsnorth warns, “towards the endgame of this whole project: transhumanism, the attempt to both immortalise ourselves and to build new intelligences alongside us that will act as our servants in the new age we are making.”

In our new regime of algorithms and probabilities, “the things which cannot be measured will of course be left out of the equation, and the things which cannot be measured happen to be the stuff of life.

TOGETHER, THESE FOUR Horsemen of New Theism have achieved a once unimaginable vibe shift — they’ve made Christianity the smart and even cool choice. Defeating Silicon Valley’s transhumanist machine won’t be easy, but these four authors have provided an extraordinary arsenal of arguments and personal witness for the battle. New Atheism promised liberation from the shackles of faith. Instead, it delivered spiritual exhaustion, cultural fragmentation and an epidemic of despair. Its godless vision of the world — sterile, mechanistic, soulless — has not made us more rational. It has made us more desperate, more lost. Renewal will require something else: community, contemplation and faith. As Kingsnorth writes, “It is planting your feet on the ground, living modestly, refusing technology that will enslave you in the name of freedom. It is building a life in which you can see the stars and taste the air. … It is to speak truth and try to live it, to set your boundaries and refuse to step over them.”

ZACHARY DAVIS, A HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL GRADUATE, IS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF FAITH MATTERS AND THE EDITOR OF WAYFARE.

SLOW AND STEADY

BY NATALIA GALICZA

Rain came one evening to soften the afternoon heat. I sat outside on my back steps watching the clouds grow ever fuller, swelling like gray balloons until they finally burst, spilling out across the high desert valley where I live. Down here, water streamed into the desiccated flower beds and patches of sunbleached soil that dotted my yard. The sun was going down and the sweet, earthy scent of petrichor filled the air. In the dim lavender of a Wasatch twilight, I scanned the ground for a certain kind of movement between the blades of wet grass.

As I strained my eyes, a patch of brown emerged against the field of green. It looked something like a dead leaf until it inched forward, revealing a round shell attached to a slick droop of a body, topped with a pair of eye stalks. A humble snail. I’d seen them hundreds of times before in gardens and on sidewalks. I’ve picked them up for closer inspection. I’ve stepped on them, by accident, horrified at the crunch of their shells beneath my feet. I’ve moved them from dangerous asphalt to the safety of a grassy median. But I’d never stopped to think much more about them. They were familiar yet unknown. Until this night, when I allowed myself to wonder.

Another snail joined the party. Soon two became three, then four. I saw baby snails and jumbo molluscs sliming across the

lawn, and realized I had no idea where they came from. Where do snails go when the sun comes out and the rain dries up? Where do they get their shells? Do they communicate? How do they eat? How long do they live? These creatures are background characters to my entire life, so commonly seen but overlooked. I had so much to learn.

I have since discovered that snails seek shelter under rocks and foliage, or even underground, in the daytime or during the winter. They can hibernate. They grow their own shells. They communicate through chemical signals in their slime. They have tiny teeth for chewing and they can live up to five years. Snails are far more interesting creatures than I had ever believed. Most things turn out that way when you look closely enough.

Turning on my phone’s flashlight, I waded deeper into the yard to investigate further. The rain still pitter-pattered on the nearby pavement and the grass tickled my ankles. I couldn’t help feeling like a child again, catching lizards in Florida or marveling at the night sky from the back seat of my parents’ car, convinced the moon outside was following us. That awe for the unknown tends to fade with age, but as I knelt in the dirt hunting these little green gobs, it registered to me that childlike wonder is always a feeling worth chasing.

AN ODE TO THE GARDEN SNAIL

EVA COLLETT, 9, PICKS SALVIA FLOWERS AT HER HOME IN SPANISH FORK, UTAH.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TESS CROWLEY

PREMIERE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER

BYUTV

SCREENS NEW DOCUMENTARY

At the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., leaders from over 50 faith-based colleges and universities — including Notre Dame, Yeshiva University, Taylor University, and BYU-Hawaii — premiered BYUtv’s new documentary “Higher Ed: The Power of Faith-Inspired Learning,” spotlighting nearly two million students and affirming the role of faith in higher education.

JEFF SIMPSON, CEO OF DESERET MANAGEMENT CORPORATION WHO ALSO OVERSEES BYU BROADCASTING, GREETS RABBI ARI BERMAN, PRESIDENT AND ROSH YESHIVA AT YESHIVA UNIVERSITY.

CANDICE MCQUEEN, PRESIDENT OF LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY, SPEAKS ALONGSIDE MICHAEL LINDSAY, PRESIDENT OF TAYLOR UNIVERSITY.

DAVID A. HOAG, PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL FOR CHRISTIAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.

ALVIN F. MEREDITH III, LEFT, PRESIDENT OF BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY–IDAHO, AND CANDICE MCQUEEN, RIGHT, PRESIDENT OF LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY, JOINED BY ELDER CLARK G. GILBERT.

THE REV. ROBERT A. DOWD, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME.

FROM LEFT, ELDER

CLARK G. GILBERT, COMMISSIONER OF THE CHURCH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM WITHIN THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS; RABBI ARI BERMAN, PRESIDENT AND ROSH YESHIVA AT YESHIVA UNIVERSITY, AND SHIRLEY HOOGSTRA, PRESIDENT EMERITA OF THE COUNCIL FOR CHRISTIAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.

RYAN P. BURGE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND GRADUATE COORDINATOR FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE AT EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY.

TED MITCHELL, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION.

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